A Map of the Island

A Map of the Island by Nigel Darbasie (University of Alberta Press) is a wonderful series of poems about a young middle-class Trinidadian boy coming of age. The poems are so expressive that they take readers right to Trinidad and surround us with swaying palms, warm air, mango trees and crowing roosters. Not all of the poems feel like a Caribbean holiday, though: this writing gives the whole picture of Trinidad, with its racial tension and economic disparity. Even the cover of the book—a watercolour painting of townspeople standing in the middle of a street—is splotched with grey and black, as if to signal that there is more to this work than palm trees and lazy nights.