Anne Spry Rush has written of Swanzy having "a great respect for Caribbean writers as representing a legitimate and distinctive element of British literature.
"[12] Writing in Caribbean Quarterly in 1949, Swanzy commented: "It is not inconceivable that of all the English-speaking world, the West Indies may be revealed as the place most suited for maintenance of a literary tradition.
"[13] In collaboration with Frank Collymore of BIM magazine, he provided a platform through the programme for some of the most significant Caribbean literary talent of the twentieth century.
As Montague Kobbe has written: "it is hard to overemphasise the tremendous influence which Henry Swanzy, editor to Caribbean Voices from 1946 onwards, would exert in the development of a literary tradition that was in its earliest stages.
[15] Writers who received their start on Caribbean Voices or were nurtured as contributors by the programme during Swanzy's tenure include George Lamming,[16] Edgar Mittelholzer, Shake Keane, Sam Selvon, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, Ian McDonald, Gloria Escoffery, John Figueroa,[17] Alfred Mendes[18] Derek Walcott[16] and V. S.
In 1956, Swanzy himself wrote about what the programme had achieved:"The listener has visited every kind of home in town and village, sat with the fishermen hefting sea-eggs, gone with the pork-knockers into Guiana jungles, followed the saga-boys and the whe-whe players, heard the riddles, the digging songs, the proverbs, the ghost stories, duppies, la Diablesse, Soukiyans, zombies, maljo, obeah, voodoo, shango.
[25] Developing a new weekly literary radio programme called The Singing Net,[26] Swanzy specifically encouraged creative writers (Cameron Duodu has written of his experience at the time),[27][28] attracting contributors and listeners through competitions and articles he wrote for the Daily Graphic.
[5] On 12 March 1946 at Hampstead register office, Swanzy married the artist Tirzah Garwood (1908 -1951), widow of Eric Ravilious, and mother of three children.
[36][37] Recipients have been: John La Rose and Sarah White of New Beacon Books (2013);[20][38] literary critics Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr (2014);[39] publisher and editor Margaret Busby (2015),[40][41][42] Jeremy Poynting, founder of Peepal Tree Press (2016), Joan Dayal, proprietor of Paper Based Books (2017), and Anne Walmsley, writer, editor, and researcher (2018).
[6] Copies of correspondence (1945–53) between Swanzy and various authors connected with Caribbean Voices is held by the Alma Jordan Library, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.