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.