Jurassic Coast

Jurassic Coast by T&T author Jannine Horsford presents a sequence of nine poems from a larger book in progress. Selected as a Bocas Emerging Writers Fellow, Horsford wrote these poems during her fellowship term, which included mentoring by poet Hannah Lowe.

The Bocas Emerging Writers Fellowships, awarded simultaneously in 2022, were a pair of one-time fellowships for emerging Caribbean-based writers in English, in two categories: poetry (awarded to Horsford) and prose (awarded to Rajiv Ramkhalawan). They were intended to support early-career Caribbean writers in advancing or completing a book manuscript or other body of work.

The fellowships were made possible by generous donations from Canisia Lubrin, winner of the overall 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature; Dionne Brand, winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize in the fiction category; Christina Sharpe, judge for the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize in the fiction category; and Allyson Holder.

To be here on this vermilion soil means quiet, necessary

rage. But she finds

some huge palm has snatched her sharpness:

she, a blade dulled by water. Now every sentence

from her lips is garbled. Her intentions now lodged

in some riverbed’s ochre murk.