Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story to tell of a teacher in a small country who did so much to inspire a local literary life.
The stamp today is from a set of stamps celebrating an Caribbean arts festival in Barbados. So bands and folk dancers are to be expected. For there suddenly to be a bust of a literary figure is a pleasant surprise. The Carifiesta was first in Barbados in 1981 and returned in 2017. So this is a good time to look back at the man on the bust.
The man on the stamp is Frank Collymore. It is issue A87, a 55 cent stamp issued by Barbados on August 11th, 1981.It was part of a four stamp issue in various denominations celebrating the Carifiesta, which Barbados hosted in 1981. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 45 cents in its cancelled state.
Frank Collymore was born in Barbados in 1893. He attended and later was a teacher for over 50 years at the Combermere School. The school can list as other notable alumni a prime minister of Barbados and the singer Rihanna. Mr. Collymore did much to encourage reading and writing among his students even loaning them his personal books.
He went further than even this good work. He founded a magazine named BIM that got local writers an outlet for their work. Through a friend at the BBC, he got several of his writers on a show called Caribbean Voices. This was broadcast by the then BBC Colonial Service. Several of the writers were able to find a much larger audience and represent their small countries in the worldwide literary scene.
After Collymore died in 1980, a local bank set up a scholarship in his honor and a local playhouse was named for him. He would be happy to know that his magazine BIM has been restarted and is again offering an outlet for local writers.
Well my drink is empty and so I take the opportunity to pour another and raise it high to toast Frank Collymore MBE in the old British way. Hip Hip Horay… Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.