My Poetry Corner February 2025 features the poem “Who made me a stranger in my world?” from the poetry collection Pierrot by poet, preacher, and retired teacher and librarian John Robert Lee, published by Peepal Tree Press (UK, 2020). Born in 1948 in the Caribbean Island nation of Saint Lucia, he majored in English and French Literature, including Caribbean Literature, at the University of the West Indies in Barbados (Cave Hill Campus) and Jamaica (Mona Campus) in the early 1980s.

His main interests and occupations include teaching, library service, literature, theatre, literary journalism, and media (print and electronic). Ordained in 1997 as an Elder of Calvary Baptist Church, he preaches at his local Baptist Church and teaches the Adult Sunday School Class. Father of three children, he lives with his wife in Saint Lucia.

During the poet’s 2020 interview with Adam Lowe of Peepal Tree Press, when asked what drew him to the image of the Pierrot as a core motif for this collection and why now, Lee said:

“In the Pierrot cover…the eyes and mouth seemed to reveal the person beneath the costume, the actor under the masquerade, with all his heart pain, bewilderment and anguish…. I also saw in that face, under the harlequin’s colors, a Christ figure, the Man of Sorrows…

“Why now? Perhaps the times we live in call for masking and unmasking, speaking plainly or through various aliases, pseudonyms, characterizations—which perhaps is a device for speaking truth to power and to each other and to ourselves, and that, self-protectively.”

None of the poems in this collection speaks more truth to power than the featured poem, “Who made me a stranger in my world?” It’s a long poem comprised of 24 three-line stanzas. In the first fourteen stanzas, Elder Lee raises 15 questions about the disrupters of our world. These questions force the reader to consider who the true criminal elements are within our diverse societies.

Who made me a stranger in my world?
Who determined I was a minority?
Who made my skin a boundary and barrier

to negotiate at immigration counters?
Who are the traffickers and traders
of bodies and souls and sex of the inheritors of the earth?

Stanzas 3 to 6 raise more questions about whothe perpetrators are of theft of land and waterways, lynching, raping, and decimation of nations and continents of citizens… of this denuding blue-green planet angling around our sun.

Whose fingers are on every coup d’état,
regime-change manipulations,
behind caravans of refugees, over tent-cities,

on bleeding children in the streets of Herat,
rubble cities of Syria, atrocities in Sudan
charity scams and child abuse in Haiti?

Stanza 9 recalls a few of the names of all those neighborhood assassinations: Trayvon Martin (2012), Tamir Rice (2014), Charleston Church mass shooting (2015), Sandra Bland (2015), Botham Jean in Texas (2018), and Jamal Khashoggi (2018). [I’ve added the dates for time reference.] The poet makes it clear in the following 10th stanza that he’s not mixing murders and metaphors. He’s aware of the history of these conflicts. He’s not disregarding tribal warfares, who sold who, / crusades, ancestral hatreds.

Costumes and masquerades evolve
but who are Babylon, Egypt and Rome today?
Who threatens and invades?

Who buys and sells house-slave leaders,
infiltrates democracies
interferes with elections?

Who spies and kills with drones
lies as a matter of policy,
hacks your private conversations?

Who arrogantly calls themselves super-powers,
whose lackeys insult you in the visa office,
whose police and soldiers shoot citizens with impunity?

[It’s worth noting that this collection was compiled during the first presidency of Donald Trump (January 2017 – January 2021).]

The next ten stanzas praise those individuals, over the years, who have stood up against discrimination and tyranny to claim the right to a decent life, without fear. These include Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Tiananmen Square tank-confronter, Palestinian sling-shot warriors, Malala Yousafzai, Liu Xiaobo, Mahatma Gandhi, and all those who in the belly of the beasts / walk with disenfranchised coalitions, / raising blood-stained placards, berth-rights, / rainbow passports of citizenship,…

Lee’s featured poem “Who made me a stranger in my world?” offers us a window through which to see ourselves as a superpower and the harm we continue to inflict upon citizens worldwide, as well as our neighbors nationwide. Under our current Musk-Trump presidency, we are undergoing a regime transformation that will be traumatic for the working-class and the most vulnerable among us. What new masks will we have to wear to counter and survive this ongoing assault on our constitutional rights?

At the same time, America’s closest allies now stand on shifting sands. Old masks have been discarded. New masks have been deployed. No more soft power. Only threats and coercion.

To read the complete featured poem “Who made me a stranger in my world?” and learn more about the work of Saint Lucian poet John Robert Lee, go to my Poetry Corner February 2025.