My chapbook, On the Borders of Belonging, published by Kelsay Books 2023

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 My chapbook, On the Borders of Belonging, is now published and available for purchase at Kelsay Books, link.: https://kelsaybooks.com/collections/all/2023?page=8

On the Borders of Belonging can also be ordered on amazon

These poems are dedicated to my forefathers, the Finches, Marshes, Josephs, Hendriksons, Willetts, and Maynards, who willingly and unwillingly crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean Islands from European and African shores; my parents, Gilbert Romeo, and Daisy Marsh Romeo with whom my siblings and I had our first immigrant experience and whose animated storytelling lit my imagination; and immigrants who have sacrificed everything in search of new homelands. For most, these are havens, second-hand homes, which, though ill-fitting at first, eventually become the accepted abode after several decades. Despite living on the edge of belonging, passing time, and survival instincts, allow most to settle well in heart and mind, in new SHELL/ters.

Here is a sample poem from On the Borders of Belonging

What Poseidon Tosses Up

I

Poseidon is angry.

His long flowing beard,

like tentacles of seaweed,

floats and rolls

the moment he turns and tosses,

the earth shudders.

He hurls up what’s foreign to his domain—

the indigestible, unpalatable,

ancient shipwrecks on his seabed,

age-old bones of dead slaves dumped

during trans-Atlantic journeys,

victims of cut-throat piracy,

sea-farers swallowed in storms.

On a day when Poseidon splashes too strongly,

tidal waves race to shore, schools of fish drift off paths,

whales are stranded, jellyfish, broken coral,  

dead fish and the recently drowned

are heaved onto beaches.

II

Today Poseidon spat out another dead child,

a child washed up like drift-wood,

one whose parents sought a haven.

This story is the headline of papers

selling the helplessness of the unwanted.

The news, the spoiler of meals and

the birth of sinking what can we do feelings

about the tales of today’s lepers.

Our new-day untouchables,

those not trapped in colonies of tents,

those who have sold all but their souls.

They are sent off in decrepit dinghies by traffickers

and caught in Poseidon’s choleric rage.

He is a god. What does he care about mere mortals?

The drowned child washed to shore.

It is the end of a dare-devil journey,

the end of a ride on the waves of hope and fear.

© Althea Romeo-Mark  

I am looking forward to your support.

Althea Romeo Mark

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and Switzerland since 1991.

She was awarded the Arts and Science Poetry Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Curtea De Arges, Romania, 2017. She was awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by the Editorial Board of The Caribbean Writer in June 2009 for publication (short story“Bitterleaf,”) in Volume 22, 2009. Short story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher English Short Story Competition/Switzerland1995; Poetry Award for the poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahoga Community Writers Conference. 1974, Scholarship Award. Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. 1971.

Althea Romeo Mark’s,  On the Borders of Belonging, a chapbook, is expected to be published in the summer of 2023. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New(2018) and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German) 2009, and three chapbooks, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer (1989), Two Faces, Two Phases (1984) and Palaver(1978). Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi. The Silent Dancing Spirit (1974) is an anthology that includes poems by Althea Romeo-Mark and prose and poetry from participants in a Black Writers’ workshop conducted at the Department of African American Affairs at Kent State University.

Publications so far 2023

The poem, “Checkpoint,” published in Persimmon Tree, Summer edition featuring international poetry, https://persimmontree.org/summer-2023/international-poetry/ “The Waterfronts Women and Men”, published in Bookends, Jamaica Sunday Observer; The Memory Thread, A poetry collection in English and Chinese that features poets Vasiliki Dragouni, William Marr, and Althea Romeo Mark: several poems published in Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry. Edited by Dr. Patricia Wesley, the 302-page anthology of poetry is the first comprehensive collection of works of literature from the 1800s to the present. The University of Nebraska Press, 2023; “Malaria Misery,” Nano Poems for Africa, The Silk Road Anthology,  Egypt, 2023;