My Poetry Corner February 2026 features the poem “Uprising” from the poetry collection Belmont Portfolio by poet, preacher, and retired teacher and librarian John Robert Lee, published by Peepal Tree Press (UK, 2023). 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.

Ordained in 1997 as an Elder of Calvary Baptist Church, Lee continues to be active in his local Baptist Church where he preaches occasionally. While he remains connected to the pulse of Caribbean literature and the arts, he is no longer actively involved in theatre and broadcasting as he once was. Father of three children, he lives with his wife in Saint Lucia.

During an exclusive interview with Caribbean Writers and Poets Magazine in November 2023 to talk about his poetry collection Belmont Portfolio, Lee said:

“I explore my world and what is happening in it, Caribbean and international; my culture and its history, its music, both traditional and contemporary, its life in all that complexity; my own personal experiences of maturing, aging, and my ever-deepening faith.”

Belmont in the title is a historical and cultural neighborhood in northeast Port of Spain, capital of the Caribbean Republic of Trinidad & Tobago. During his stay in Belmont, while attending the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in 2019, Lee took photos of the area that later inspired a series of ekphrastic poems.

In the two-part poem “Watchman,” the epigraph from the biblical Prophet Ezekiel 3:17 – Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear a word from My mouth, and give them warning from me – sets the tone and warning of the poetic persona.

In the six-stanza “Part I: Babylon – City of Man,” the poetic persona speaks out with the fervor of the Prophet Ezekiel against colonial oppression, and post-colonial human exploitation and injustice (stanzas 1-3, p. 41):

Ask native peoples who trusted paper promises
ask Africans chained below decks of slave caravels
ask Asians & other immigrants from islands of the sea,

ask them about liberal democracy that plants burning crosses
on their lawns, knees in their necks, metal in their fleeing backs,
that makes them invisible ciphers fenced in minority ghettos, 

that gives power to autocrats who suppress their votes,
ask. This is Babylon. This is its system of privilege.
This is Nimrod’s land, Babel in the plain of Shinar. 

The term “Babylon” has its origin in the Afro-Jamaican Rastafarian religious/social movement in the 1930s. It represents the white European colonial and imperialist power structure which has oppressed black and brown peoples across the Caribbean Region.

The ten-stanza “Part II: Chant down Babylon” takes us to a city street on a Caribbean Island, where a local, black, dread-locked prophet rails against the wrongs he sees within the society (stanzas 1-3, 8-10, pp. 42-43):

The dread-locked prophet comes every day to his box under the flamboyant tree
in the square by government house, facing the cathedral,
with people passing through to taxi stand & restaurants,

& every day mockers give him talk when he chant down the system,
chant down Babylon, bloodfire scandals,
point with his shaking finger at the pride & selfishness

of the busy metropolis; & he chant down
meaningless religion, church & state complicity,
idols of liturgical masquerade, big pomposity,

[…]

when you poor you like dog! This Babylon! This slave colony of Babylon! 
& he come out against racism in Amerikkka, classism in his own island,
against hatred for people who different –

& the prophet start to bawl when he see what they doing
with their garbage, to the fish with their plastic,
how they cut down trees to build hotel & warehouse

& more golf course. & prophet chant & he chant & he chant
all the way to his little place outside the town.

The chants of the dread-locked prophet fall on deaf ears.

The poetic persona in the featured six-stanza poem “Uprising,” with the epigraph from another biblical Prophet Jeremiah 22:29 – O earth, earth, earth, / Hear the word of the Lord – pleads with humanity to address the junk and plastic waste destroying human and non-human lives. It’s a prophetic call for the uprising of the human spirit to save our ravaged, sorry earth from our neglect and abuse.

The first three stanzas connect the links between our disregard for each other and the non-human beings with whom we share our planet (p. 40):

Like all our garbage throttling oceans, the barrage
of horrendous news from every corner of this fatigued planet
deadens us to suffering life in war zones, famine-plagued villages,

Race-baiting sidewalks, grief-stricken ICU wards, streets of homeless children
& aging dementia, numerous catalogues of pain
to which we have grown numb, dumb & frankly, bored –

Hearts & minds are choked with junk, vain
matter on which we feed neglected souls,
desacralized spirits, if you allow me to invoke imago Dei,

In stanzas 4 and 5, the poetic persona draws our attention to sacred deep-sea spaces, where we throttle [marine life] with careless plastic capital – / we need, we need to rise to life, rise to see our fall / from the grace we were gifted, rise with hearts leaping to do right.

The prophet can only draw attention to the follies of humankind. It’s up to us to heed the warning and do the necessary hard work: [to] rise up over our ravaged, sorry earth.

To read the complete featured poem “Uprising” and learn more about the work of Saint Lucian poet John Robert Lee, go to my Poetry Corner February 2026.