A Blog by Althea Romeo-Mark

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

September-October Blog: Althea Romeo Mark Writings and Photography Featured in Portuguese Journal, Revista Triplov

I am delighted to share that my poetry, short stories, photography, and two literary critiques of my writing are featured in Revista Triplov, A Portuguese Literary Journal.

Please click the link below to read the full feature: poems, photographs, short stories, book review, and literary critique.

https://triplov.pt/revistaTriplov/althea-romeo-mark-e-a-diaspora-das-caraibas/

I have translated the introduction from Portuguese to English for your reading pleasure. The poems, short stories, and book review are written in English. The literary critique, a much longer work, is in Spanish.

Introduction

To speak of Althea Romeo-Mark is to plunge into the suffering and dizzying experience of the Caribbean diaspora. It is a journey of displacement that took her from Antigua and the U.S. Virgin Islands to Liberia, through London, and eventually to Switzerland, where she settled. This experience of diaspora resonates deeply with our own family memories: the paths of Portuguese emigration have so often crossed geographical boundaries, taking us, for example, as far as Guinea. There is a kinship of journeys, marked by loss and the rebuilding of home, that binds us intimately to this writing.

This is a body of literature deeply marked by the ordeal of departure, with a global resonance, yet one that takes on a profoundly personal dimension. Even when the author chooses to write about others or engages in the creation of fiction, the reader is struck by the unshakable conviction that everything written is, in essence, autobiographical. There is no room for artifice; the facts are presented in their rawest form because they are, in themselves, harsh and cruel realities.

At one end of her journey stands the horror of a civil war in Monrovia, from which it was imperative to escape. At the other, amid the tranquility of Europe or during her childhood in the Virgin Islands, other forms of exclusion and silencing emerge, which she also had to survive. Confronted with the violence of this journey, Althea’s writing rejects embellishment and self-pity. To avoid collapsing emotionally under the weight of memory, the poetic voice erects a barrier of restraint: it takes refuge in anti-lyricism and dons the uniform of hyperrealism.

This sobriety protects the author from the abyss of tears, while transferring to the reader an emotional impact from which there is no escape.

An exemplary illustration of this Aesthetic of Rawness occurs in her poem about the Liberian Civil War. Here, all lexical restraint is abandoned to make way for the naked truth of events.

Extreme hunger forces those fleeing the conflict to eat grass by the roadside. The stomach, in a desperate struggle for survival, behaves like that of a ruminant, causing the food to rise back up.

Yet there is a tragic biological barrier that marks the boundary between species: the human digestive system lacks the gastric capacity to break down or digest cellulose. Grass is indigestible to humans.

The act thus becomes a stark monument to physical rejection and biological desperation.

We are not, therefore, confronted with the detached gaze of someone observing the world through a window, nor with the utilitarian account of a journalist or photojournalist who passes through and then moves on. Althea Romeo-Mark has experienced the diaspora firsthand, in her very flesh. She is a survivor who transforms trauma into literature that bears living witness.

Beyond the rawness and horror, the moral foundations that sustain this survival and prevent the destruction of the self are joy and hope. It is her Caribbean cultural heritage that sustains her, finding expression both in the rhythms of her verse and in the brilliance of her prose.

In this volume of Revista Triplov, that mastery also takes the form of the narrative vignette—a short, concentrated literary genre that functions as a photograph in words.

Through the vignette, Althea abandons traditional plot structures to capture the absolute essence of a single moment, the atmosphere of a room, or the essence of an isolated memory.

It is the literary snapshot placed at the service of an entire lifetime of nomadism and resistance.

Curtea de Argeș (Romania), Poetry Nights Festival, 2017.

Finally, we would like to thank Althea for the generosity with which she participates in our literary endeavors.

We met at one of the festivals organized by Dumitru Ion in Curtea de Argeș, Romania, in 2017. From that year's Poetry Nights Festival, we have retrieved a photograph of Althea reciting a poem published in the festival's anthology that year, as well as a group photograph featuring, alongside Althea Romeo-Mark, the Colombian (and French) writer Berta Lucía E. Estrada and Maria Estela Guedes.

Maria Estela Guedes & Alex P. Zinga (AI)

https://triplov.pt/revistaTriplov/althea-romeo-mark-e-a-diaspora-das-caraibas/

https://triplov.pt/revistaTriplov/?fbclid=IwdGRzaAVC8pZjbGNrBULyUGV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMDN0TTVZdzlsZkJGT0FHMU1zcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEecck4fnp_QzGTKkg7LTBFMRHfAxlsd0qgL__0WSX9wV2Sa1geVh-HzNeVsaM_aem_MQiQb95QkoXCwMGA4afLSQ&sfnsn=mo

Saturday, August 1, 2026

July-August 2026 Blog: European Beach Impressions

July-August 2026 Blog: European Beach Impressions

I have had the privilege of being invited by my son and his family to join them on several European holidays. Once I know the flight is less than three hours, I can never turn it down. My days of enduring flights of ten hours or more are behind me.

My love of travel was instilled in me by my mother, who took my younger sister and me to visit family on nearby Caribbean islands, including St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua. As an adult, I travelled farther afield, visiting Grenada, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and many other countries. My life's journey has also taken me across continents. I lived in the United States, then in Liberia, West Africa (1976–1990), and later in London, England, before settling in Basel, Switzerland, where I have lived since 1991.

My two most recent sunny holidays were to Sardinia and Santorini. Their warm climate, beautiful landscapes, and inviting beaches remind me of home, yet they are less than three hours away by plane. I am not a swimmer; I am a writer. I am content to lie in the sun and watch people, wade into the water to soak my feet, or wander with a camera in hand, capturing the scenery and the mood of the day. Later, I capture those same moments again with pen and paper.

Here are a few poems that reflect my impressions of these places and people who flock to them.

Watching Hawkers On A Beach in Olbia

On this grey day

when the clouds holds back the sun,

the beach still overflows.

A rainbow of umbrellas and tents

cover slow, simmering bodies

on towels and in plastic chairs.

I sit in a one, the prison

my son has helped me into.

I am a people watcher

when not reading and writing.

Hawkers, mostly Senegalese,

tramp up and down selling their wares--

towels, plastic balls, dresses, headbands, trinkets…

everything under the sun.

anything they can carry in hand, on head.

And there are Senegalese women

selling hair-braiding.

They zigzag between the bodies on the beach

in search of customers,

your choice of braided-style

on a poster they display.

At their base, not far

from where I am grounded,

I watch a woman, baby on back,

whose hands dance between strands of hair.

Her zig-zagging fingers, leaping and knotting,

create patterns on a head.

If Poseidon got tired of it all,

hawkers and sun-bathers and on-lookers,

he only need to splash his hands.

But the sea shows no sign of his splashing.

My eyes glaze over,

watching the hair-braiding---

the quick orchestration of hands,

the flicking and twisting of fingers.

They have put me, in my chair,

and Poseidon, lulling in the frothy surf,

under a spell.

Rooted and Uprooted

I sit in a green chair

rooted in white sand.

I needed a hand

to get into it...

my arthritic knees

painful in the steep bending.

From the low seat

the aqua sea is rimmed by the light blue sky,

hemmed by the white-sanded shore

dotted by a rainbow of umbrellas

shading people in various stages of roasting.

The police come by

ordering me in Italian to move

and I try to speak with my hands,

tell them my old bones

cannot uproot themselves.

I am saved by a nice man

who heaves me onto my feet

and resettles me into a spot

not on a forbidden path.

I am rooted in my chair once again.

and I watch those grateful

to the gods of sun and sea

for browning their bodies

now roasted rare, medium and well done.

(Althea Romeo Mark Sardinia 2025)

On The Way to The Beach in Perissa, Santorini

We had arrived late at night in Perissa.

In the morning, the desert-like terrain unveils itself.

Brown, barren mountains reaching for the sky surround us,

stare down at the dry land.

The wind blows sand and dust in all directions.

Our white hotel stands in stark contrast,

to the brown mountains and blue sky.

On the road to main street, the town center,

two piebald horses and a black donkey

stand amid plastic trash in a dry field.

Our hearts go out to animals standing in the heat.

A blue container of water is there to quench their thirst.

We wonder where the owners of the branded animals are?

Do they take them home at night?

To the left of us, a white church sits in a crevice,

in the bosom of the giant mountain,

a place to do penance, I presume.

Is getting there is part of the penance?

No roads are visible from where we stand.

Crossing the main road to the beach,

our ears are assaulted by revved up cars and motorcycles,

the noise testing the strength of our eardrums and hearts.

The black-sanded beach appears,

brown, straw umbrellas lining its length.

Tourists are roasting on the lounge chairs.

Some lobster red, some seared brown

like grilled meat at a barbecue,

sun-tan lotion the extra sauce for simmering.

The deep blue water invites us to enter.

We put our toes in, then sink in waist deep,

watch blue, yellow and red fish nibble at our legs and feet.

We dip down, feeling like a christening in the Aegean.

We are born again to the luxury of the seaside.

"Today, The Wind Is King"

White buildings stand against the pale blue sky

amid a swirl of cream sand and brown dust

blown left by the wind.

Subdued trees lean left too.

The windy voice mimics waves rushing to shore,

the crashing of water whipping rocks.

But here, there are no waves or rocks;

the sea is far away.

An abandoned construction site

bears the brunt of the lashing,

the lasso of sandy dust swirling.

Lumber and wires are ripped away in the storm,

their pieces fly off to unknown destinations

on the wind’s whimsical wings.

The brown mountains bear witness to it,

and so do we from the safety of our homes.

We stay in when the wind is king.

Let it do its work.

Keep out of its way until it is done venting.

Althea Romeo Mark is an Afro-Caribbean educator and writer born in Antigua in 1948 and raised in the US Virgin Islands. While a professor at the University of Liberia, she founded the Liberian Association of Writers. A mother of three Liberian-born children, she has published If Only the Dust Would Settle, The Nakedness of New, and On the Borders of Belonging. She won the Vincent Cooper Literary Prize (2023) for ”Saving Papa Rojas from the Deathbed Flirt.”

Thursday, May 21, 2026

April-May Blog: Three Poems Read at Poetry and Prose Open Mic Mother’s Day 10.05.26

Three Poems Read at Poetry and Prose Open Mic Mother’s Day 10.05.26

Three poems in honor of Mother’s Day 2026

Poems are taken from The Nakedness of New collections published in 2017, Althea Romeo Mark

Hanging Hearts on Clothes Lines

I Wounds

I said I was moving to West Africa.

“Gyal done gone lose she sense,

goin’ to de dark continent,”

spat grandmother at my announcement.

Speechless, stern-faced mother

penned a letter of scalding words,

questions my motive for moving to

“ dat godforsaken place.”

When I put the Atlantic ocean between us,

I didn’t know that doing what I wanted

was launching spears at their hearts.

II True Grit

I get married and bear three children

“in dat godforsaken place.”

After knock-down bouts with malaria,

I am a broomstick, collar-bone sunken.

I relive, thrive in grandmother’s by-gone days—

learn to start a fire, cook and grill on a coal pot,

draw well-water, kneel into the dirt of living.

I rub shoulders with peril—

make my own road through the bush

when it is swallowed by flood,

stare down the barrel of soldiers’ guns,

witness the hunt and capture of a pregnant python,

listen to men talk about the potency of its head,

the richness of its large eggs,

escape the jaws of driver ants and

a trap set by “heart-men.”

I drive pass my neighbor,

mother of a Bassa chief

and a condemned witch.

She pays penance daily for her deeds,

sits in mud on the roadside

and sustains her bags of bones

with boiled peanuts.

The Caribbean lore about men

gouging out hearts to make sacrifices

becomes real and I learn of new ones—

the danger of lightning throwers, and Nigi river-people

who drag victims down into their underwater world.

III Life-lines

Mother’s monthly letters

are smudged with her tears.

she wonders,“Wha’ ah go do if me chile dead?”*

A new letter from mother says

“Granny dead three months ago,

didn’ wan’ burden you wid worry,

throw cocobey ‘pon yaws.”*

I wallow in the thought

she needs to spare me

from the news of lost loved ones.

IV No Time-warp

Anger floods me

when I see mother again.

She is a greying, bent woman.

Who am I angry with? Time?

At seventy-two she abandons me,

leaves me an orphan just when

I am beginning to fit womanhood’s cloak.

Rope

The tug-of-war,

the pulling of knotted rope,

the stretching ends,

the fraying ends,

fingers red and burning

from holding on,

from waiting to see

who is first to cave.

Who will lose their grip?

Mother or daughter?

It is not a matter

of winning or losing.

It is the Mother who must let go,

reject the temptation to throw a lasso.

The falling daughter

will rise into her own.

She will carry her mother’s cautions

in memory like a suitcase

filled with clothes,

and take them out to wear,

one by one,

to see how well they fit.

Beneath them all—

her own long cord,

the secret binding,

the thickened string,

the rope she, too, will pull

when the tug-of-war comes.

Runners in the Marathon of Time

To my granddaughters

You were the gifts we awaited,

seeds nurtured in love,

brought to us through

the strength of our daughters.

Your lives, sung to us by our foremothers,

prayed for in their boundless world,

are the answer to our prayers, their prayers.

You come from women who are neither

willing victims nor victimizers.

Our words, passed on through time,

were never weapons of destruction,

but wise pronouncements

steeling minds and backbones.

You will witness the majesty, misery,

and mysteries of this world.

We will watch you stumble over obstacles,

observe you slip and slide while scaling walls

put up to hinder your dreams.

We, your guardians,

will let you find your way,

oversee the road you take,

allow you to become you.

Your lives are our continuum.

You are the torch-bearers of the new generation.

We pass the baton on,

blood of our blood.

First Published in WomanSpeak: A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, ed. Lynn Sweeting, Vol. 8, 2016

Althea Romeo-Mark, an educator and writer, was born in Antigua, West Indies, and grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Connecticut, and Ohio, USA, Liberia, West Africa, London, England, and Switzerland since 1991. Althea Romeo Mark, who writes poetry, short stories, and personal essays, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), and four chapbooks, On the Borders of Belonging, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Two Faces, Two Phases, Palaver, and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit.

Althea was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in 2024 for her On the Borders of Belonging poetry collection by Kelsay Books publishers 2023. https://www.hofferaward.com/ She was awarded the Vincent Cooper Literary Prize in 2023 for her short story,” Saving Papa Rojas from the Deathbed Flirt.” It goes to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by celebrated post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau Brathwaite to describe vernacular language born in the Caribbean).