Guyanese poet and political activist Martin Wylde Carter was born in Georgetown, British Guiana, where his family—of mixed African, Indian, and European ancestry—was part of the colored middle class. Carter attended Queen’s College in Georgetown in the early 1940s. After graduation, he worked in the civil service: first in the Post Office, then as secretary to the superintendent of prisons. His first poems began to appear in the early 1950s, and he also wrote political pieces under the pseudonym of M. Black (to protect his civil service post).