The Many Faces of Richard. A. Byron - Cox
A Global Leader
Richard A. Byron-Cox is a national of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), a small archipelago in the South-eastern Caribbean Sea. He has familial connection to at least five other countries in the region.
Educated in the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America, he is trained in law, diplomacy, and international relations. He is multilingual, an essayist, writer and international law specialist, holding his PhD in Public International Law.
After university, Dr Byron-Cox worked with the Ministry of Legal Affairs of SVG as Chief Advisor on international law. He later joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Chief Advisor to both the Minister and the Prime Minister on matters of foreign policy, and international law and relations.
In 1998 Dr Byron-Cox was invited to join the United Nations Organization (UNO), where he worked for more than two and a half decades. At the UNO he worked on legal matters and later on the issues of sustainable development and the environment. His last office at the UNO was Head of Capacity Development and Innovation at the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). There he was responsible inter alia for spearheading the entire capacity building programme; coordination of the fellowship/mentorship programme, and design and development of the Secretariat’s programme on innovation.
Dr Byron-Cox has been special guest and/or distinguished lecturer and/or visiting professor at many universities including the Namibia State University, Yonsie University, South Korea, the University of Bonn, Oxford University, University College of London (UCL), the Hacettepe University Ankara, Turkey, the National University of Lesotho, the Kharazmi University in Iran, the Addis Ababa University, the University of Cologne, LUMZA University, Italy, University of Havana, and the University of Trinidad and Tobago.
A Writer
Byron-Cox began his literary writing at a very early age. He started with poetry, composing his first poems at the tender age of eight. Darkness, written at that time, was a reflection of his fear of this phenomenon instilled in him, thanks to the ghost (jumbie) stories he heard growing up in the household he did. His poetry at this time couldn’t but reflect his youthfulness and very limited knowledge of poetic English and poetic style. Indeed, quite a few of these verses were written using a mix of standard English and the Vincentian vernacular. However, all of his verses of that time remained hidden from public eye, for Richard A. Byron-Cox was a boy with a particular childhood. Further, except for a few pieces such as Darkness and Girls, most of the writings of Byron-Cox’s preteen years are forever lost to posterity.
Upon entering his teens Byron-Cox began doing rhythm poetry, which was the composing and reciting of his poems to particular drum beats/rhythms. This was a period of prolific poetry writing for him, but again, virtually all of his work done at that time is forever lost. Most of these poems were written in the Vincentian lingo and included pieces such as “That ah go down in South Africa,” “The People get Freedom,” and “They not positive.” This was a period of awakened social and political consciousness among the youths of the Caribbean, thanks in part to the Black Power movement, the socialist/anti-colonial/anti-imperialist struggles taking place in most of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the fight to end apartheid in South Africa, among other revolutionary movements taking place around the world. These moments and processes had great influence on the lives and writings of many a young Caribbeans including Richard A. Byron-Cox’s.
By his mid-teens, i.e., at the age of fifteen, Byron-Cox had naturally progressed to writing short stories, the first of which was “The Christmas Recitation.” Two years later he was invited to relate this story on the national radio station as part of that radio’s Christmas holiday programming. The story was an instant hit and convinced Byron-Cox that he had something to say, and that he needs to say it. But while he continued to write poetry it would be many, many years before he took to story-writing seriously.
Capacity Building
Entering his 20s, Byron-Cox also entered university where he remained for the next nine years completing his tertiary education right up to the level of PhD. During this time, he wrote poetry on and off, some of which survive. Here he began to broaden his scope tackling subjects ranging from the romantic to the philosophical. This resulted in verses such as “Yet Love”, “The gift”, “The Meaning of Christmas” and the simple yet powerful “May.” This period testifies to the beginning of a very slowly but surely maturing writer. But more significantly however, this was the time when the idea of sharing his writing with the public on a consistent basis was born. And so it was that Byron-Cox first began to write for the newspapers, and later journals, something he continues to this day.
As recalled above, upon completion of his university training Dr Byron-Cox embarked upon a professional career, working first with the SVG government, and then with the UNO. During this period he continued to write for newspapers and journals, and began writing chapters for academic works on various subjects in the fields of international law, the environment and sustainable development among others. However, pursuit of his career as an international civil servant became paramount, for like Voltaire, he understood that he needed a source of living, and writing could not provide this. Even so, he published to critical acclaim, “Were Mama’s Tears in Vain?” This is an historical novel about the life and living of the poor and disenfranchised in the Caribbean from 1900 to 1960. This book has had rave reviews from around the world, and set in motion his thoughts of leaving UNO to pursue writing as his full-time profession.
In October 2023, Dr Byron-Cox resigned from the UNO to commit himself and his time fully to his new profession. “The Story of Paulene Bramble: Spring’s Blossoms and Young Thorns,” released in August 2024, is his first production since making this change in profession. This work has received excellent reviews gathering superlatives, from being iconic and a masterpiece, to being classic and definitive. It is seen by many – along with Were Mama’s Tears in Vain?, as another massive contribution by Richard A. Byron-Cox to Caribbean, black and world literature.
