Awards

• Long-listed for BOCAS Literary Festival Award 2020 (Trinidad and Tobago)

Overview

On 18 September 2017, a category 5 hurricane, the worst in recorded history, hit the Caribbean island of Dominica. Hurricane Maria destroyed lives and land. Nothing would be the same again. Guabancex explores the complex mix of experiences and emotions, both during and after the event. The collection is named in recognition of the ancient indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. One of these groups, the Taino, called the supreme female spiritual entity associated with all natural destructive forces, Guabancex.

Full Product Details

9781999776879

Table of Contents

Reviews

Guabancex 'explores the complex mix of experiences and emotions' that erupted when (and after) Hurricane Maria ripped through the island of Dominica on 18th September 2017. Its title invokes the indigenous Taino's 'supreme female spiritual entity associated with all natural destructive forces'. What stands out most for me is the way the poet both calls in and questions religious faith in the face of carnage.--Sphinx The collection is tonally an emotional roller coaster. Its imagery is precise and evocative. Its energy and word flow; use of symbolism, metaphor, anthropomorphism, allusions; its play on words, and blurring of the lines between realism and mythology. All of this elevates it.--Jhohadli The forms of many of the poems mirror the chaotic, wind-tossed nightmare of the hurricane that devastated Dominica. A poem filled with words not metaphors, Invoked and Hurricane Praxis are, on the page, words flung about in the strong gusts of memory that evoke the terrifying and dislocating experience.--Newsday

Author Information

Celia A Sorhaindo was born in Dominica. She left when she was eight, lived for many years in the UK and returned home in 2005. Her poems have been published in Caribbean journals and in the anthology, New Daughters of Africa. She is a fellow of the Cropper Foundation Creative Writers Workshop and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. She has been long-listed for the UK National Poetry competition. This is her first published collection.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available