Farah O’Sullivan’s poetry gets international attention

This week’s spotlight is on T&T-born poet and writer Gilberte Farah O’Sullivan, whose poem “Agoraphobia Around the Savannah” has been nominated in the USA for the ‘Best of the Net’ Award (to be announced in 2024). Farah O’Sullivan, whose poems were first published in the Trinidad Express when she was 13 and attending Providence Girls’ Secondary School (a nun was impressed by her work and sent it to the paper), has been published globally, including Moko Magazine (USVI), Orange Peel (USA), Antirrhinum (USA), Barren (USA), Post Script (USA), Voice of Eve (USA), Gargouille (Australia), The Spring City (UK), Zanna (UK), Sundays by the River (Holland/UK). O’Sullivan’s poetry collection is currently under consideration by a UK poetry press.

Currently based in the UK, Farah O’Sullivan says having lived in Trinidad for 30 years (punctuated by two migrations), the Caribbean landscape is embedded in the “soul” of her poetry. The urge to be near the sea is a running ‘character’ in her work. “I am haunted by dichotomous themes of transience and permanence, belonging and non-belonging. The inner and outer life intermingle in my work that examines womanhood, faith, myth, landscape, fears, strange relationships, heartbreak, dysfunctionality, and the disturbing wonder of life while deeply rooted in Trinidad.” But, Farah O’Sullivan says Trinidad is “also a place of danger and displacement. It’s a place she strives to love, “even though it can be rough on the heart.”

Farah O’Sullivan’s internationally recognised poem “Agoraphobia Around the Savannah” must resonate with women in Trinidad who regularly visit the Queens Park Savannah in Port-of-Spain and any woman who has felt fear in public spaces. Japanese pannist Asami Nagakiya was found there in 2016, strangled on Ash Wednesday under a tree. That mixture of fear and sadness around the beloved national park has intensified for women in Trinidad after 24-year-old Gabriella Rafael, of Diego Martin, a mother of five, was raped and strangled in May this year. Agoraphobia Around the Savannah (excerpt with missing stanzas). With Anthony Vahni Capildeo (nominated in the UKA for the Best of The Net award (announced in 2024). All rights belong to the author, and excerpts are published here with express permission from the author. 

Agoraphobia Around the Savannah

With Anthony Vahni Capildeo by Gilberte Farah O’Sullivan 

Do I talk a set of wildness? Wildness, but not chaos.

Cataclysm I want cataclysm.

Explosion also signals beginnings s p r e a d o u t m a s s i v e Here was once a plantation Then cows, then airplanes, then horses, cricket Bodies buried, masqueraders ...murders, A nip of kindness to those who walked before.

But as for now, at this moment, need a single jumbie seed Look I found three! Only take one at a time. You could at least make a hand-band with the others.

One seed at a time - don’t confuse matters.

Does it get hot when you rub it? No, that is donkeyeye Ah yes, correction taken we are all in need of correction.

Can it be worn for protection? Not sure about protection.  Cannot believe you leave so soon, back to your cocoon Expect you will miss the heat

Girl, I am so exposed.

No rosary pea can comfort me Feel I’m going mad sometimes.

Feel to take rheum of dog eye, put it in my own, see the devil clearer. If nothing else, at least you know good obeah. (published by orangepeel, 2022 USA) Delerium, after Plath (Excerpt) by Gilberte Farah O’Sullivan 

I thank her too early, the woman who has brought me tea in a broken handle cup that was once my mother’s. It’s plain orange pekoe, the kind that ails your stomach– a low brand of sympathy no one else cares to steep.

Locked in the cupboard for years, leaves escape the weevil-burrowed filter and settle like ringworm dust. This worsens the headache.

Last night I found her modeling photos. Her lips a gorgeous wound in sorrel red What man or beast could resist a well-pressed camisole at her breast, freshwater pearls, a strand of spermatozoa.

There is still some ham and mustard left from Christmas, but she has forgotten bread, so I do not eat.

Why can’t you be civil? My father asks. Twelfth-century nuns lopped off their noses In hopes of a peaceable virginity Vikings blazed their convent anyway. Agape-mouthed am I. In future I must devise a cleverer plan to avoid spiting my own face. (published by Barren magazine, 2018, USA) 

Outside Woman by Gilberte Farah O’Sullivan (Excerpt)

She came to him open-mouthed like the caves of Gasparee, black gums dripping stalactite breathing tendrils of herb, Cursing a streak of blue devils on his progeny.

Unrepentant, she leapt the fire pass feeling no pain, her steps calloused since the day an enemy broomed her feet so she would not marry.

He did not mind her pepperseed tongue It made him dream of coarser food he’d hungered for too long.

(Published in Voice of Eve, 2018) 

Gilberte Farah O’Sullivan, currently pursuing a diploma in counselling and psychotherapy in the UK, holds an MFA in Creative Fiction/Cultural Studies from UWI and BA in English Literature from the US and is currently editing her unpublished novel, My Darling Indra, which is set in Trinidad and based on family secrets and scandals. 

IRA MATHUR is a Guardian columnist and the winner of the non-fiction OCM Bocas Prize for Literature 2023.