MAKE US ALL ISLANDS

Book excerpt: A history submerged in the ever-shifting currents of the ocean emerges in this debut collection by Richard Georges. These poems craft narratives of long forgotten migrations, shipwrecks, and the personal with a vivid and sensual aesthetic that is located in the contested spaces between the sea and the shore. "The voice is placid, and leaves no print of self-conscious style and ego but rather the poems themselves, rolling softly up the beach and then sucking us into a greater history of the sea and our only and sometimes lonely selves-- our i-lands." --Vladimir Lucien "In these pages all roads lead to the sea. The poet never plots a route. Gods fall, forgotten paths return, poetry books break and glasses of water kill. Though the sea divides, it brings redemption. Georges shows all mankind to be one author. His beauteous poems rise like coral islands. Justice is done." --Andre Bagoo "Singing 'light into bleakness, ' in vivid poetic language that shakes us out of apathy, Georges' harsh and lyrical hymns portray the painful beauty of the Virgin Islands and Caribbean archipelago." --Loretta Collins Klobah