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.”

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