Mahadai Das

Sadly Das died in 2003 on April 3rd in the country of Barbados, from an illness relating to cardiac arrest which was suffered 10 days before her death. Das was never able to live up to her full potential due to the life ending cardiac arrest related disease that sadly put an end to her life at the young age of only 49 years old, leaving much of her story to still be told.

Several of her poems were included in The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry (Heinemann, 1992).

She was a dancer, actress, teacher and beauty queen (Ms. Dewali, 1971), served as a volunteer member of the Guyana National Service around 1976 and was part of the Messenger Group promoting ‘Coolie’ art forms at a time when Indo-Guyanese culture was virtually excluded from national life. She was one of the first Indo-Caribbean women to be published. Her poetry explicitly relates to ethnic identity, something which contrasts her with other female Indo Caribbean poets. Another theme in her writing is the working conditions in the Caribbean islands. Das's A Leaf in His Ear was included in an article on "10 Female Caribbean Authors You Should Know". One of Das's last published work of poetry was named "bones" and was published in 1988 by the Peepal Press of London.

Mahadai Das was a Guyanese poet. She was born in Eccles, East Bank Demerara, Guyana, in 1954. She wrote poetry from her early school days at The Bishops' High School, Georgetown. She did her first degree at the University of Guyana and received her B.A. in philosophy at Columbia University, New York, and then began a doctoral programme in Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Das became very ill and sadly was never able to complete the programme.