Vernacular soundings: Poetry from the Lesser Antilles in the aftermaths of hurricanes Irma and Maria

This chapter analyzes contemporary poetry from the Lesser Antilles engaging with natural disasters: Celia A Sorhaindo’s Guabancex (2020) published with Papillote Press, based in Dominica; Lasana M. Sekou’s Hurricane Protocol (2019) published with House of Nehesi Publishers, based in St. Martin, and Richard Georges’s Epiphaneia (2019) published with a London based independent publisher, Outspoken Press. By looking at these poets from the perspective of the vernacular, the chapter rethinks ecocritical writing as world literature not by virtue of its world literary themes, international circulation or propagation of new global visions, but by the actualization of a certain vernacular sensibility. I claim that what we currently witness on the Caribbean poetry scene is not the emergence of a new “disaster genre” that could easily be incorporated into a sub-category of world literature. Instead, it should be read in terms of vernacular responses to devastating natural forces carried by sound, noise, and rhythm, which is part of a Caribbean continuum. Drawing on Kamau Brathwaite’s notion of “nation language” and Édouard Glissant’s concept “forced poetics”, I argue that it is through such vernacular soundings that the poetry of Sorhaindo, Georges, and Sekou resonates across the world.