Caribbean Poet Jacinth Howard with Front Cover of her Poetry Collection The Mother Island (2023)
Photo Credit: Barbados Today – March 18, 2025

My Poetry Corner May 2026 features the poem “Undermining Eden” from the debut poetry collection The Mother Island by writer, poet, and university professor Jacinth Howard, published by Brown Bird Publishing (2023). In 2020, the manuscript of this collection won the second prize at the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award competition. All excerpts of her poetry cited below are from this collection.

Born in the Caribbean Islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the young Jacinth’s love for reading and literature led her to pursue English Literature at the tertiary level. She earned a BA (2014), MPhil (2017), and PhD (2020) in English Language and Literature/Letters from the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. She currently lives with her husband and two children in Barbados, where she teaches Literature at her alma mater.

In The Mother Island, Howard tells the stories of mothers who have lost a child, suffered domestic abuse, and were silenced because of the trauma. Her opening poem “Oya”—the African Yoruba goddess of the winds, lightning, and storms—is a testament to the strength of the woman (p. 5):

I used to think I had lost myself, / Engulfed in whistling gales. / Swept away, like hurricane come, […] Then in a single, silent moment, / I understood. […] I am the mother, dancing in the tempest. / I am the daughter, harmonizing with the torrent. / I am the woman, born of the storm.

“The Silenced Sister” speaks of the abused wife and mother, trapped in the lies of undying love and everchanging masks of her man, and unable to set herself free (verse 3 of 7, pp. 8-9):

Your heart is his, / At least it used to be. / Until he realized it wouldn’t stop beating. / So, he wouldn’t stop beating / Dragging Rapunzel by her rope of hair / Severing every escape route / Breaking your beauty inside and out / With love (on occasion) all throughout / So, you would never leave.

“Night Standard” tells the story of the tired, breast-feeding mother (p. 34):

It’s duty to keep a whole household in check. / And if all else fails, at least mother knows best. For all the hows and whys she lost herself / Are irrelevant in this milk sodden moment / When instead of milking reasons to shout / A sleepy child looks up at her, milky-white-mouthed / Pink lids half-closed, he’s unconcerned about / Whether mothers need rest to run too.

The featured poem, “Undermining Eden” (p. 12) addresses the condition of the woman in Judeo-Christian patriarchal societies which teach that Eve was responsible for the first couple’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

They say it was a woman,
Who undermined Eden.
Performed the first trade of human bodies.
Permanently expelled from paradise:
For glowing, green eyes and power lust.
Still in effect post life sentence.
Despite the virgin’s painful sacrifice
To redeem mankind,
Woman is still paying plenty.

While Eve is not named in the poem, reference is made to Lilith, a primordial female demon found in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology. Whether the dissident was Eve or Lilith, her penalties for disobeying or defying the male deity all relate to motherhood: pain in giving birth and loss due to miscarriage and stillbirth.

Multiplied sorrow, responsibility
Believed to be brought on
As Lilithian penalty
All meeting at the midpoint
Of an acute angle cuing kicks in the gut:
Issuing broken, disappointed cries
Scarlet signals, Mother Nature arrives
An exclamation: single, red-lined test
An exhalation of babes fatherless, bereft
The howling effects of infantile hauntings,
Another miscarriage that nobody’s counting.

It’s a life sentence for the woman; passed on from one generation to the next, throughout the ages. No redemption. Not even the sacrifice of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, made any difference. But the joy of motherhood overrides the pain, sorrow, and responsibilities.

To read the complete featured poem “Undermining Eden” and learn more about the work of Caribbean poet Jacinth Howard, go to my Poetry Corner May 2026.