Pe­ter Ray Blood

At the age of 33, Michelle El­sa Borel has done it all: a moth­er of three, a broad­cast­er for 16 years, brand man­ag­er for a pop­u­lar fast food chain, a stu­dent at Costaatt, a pas­try chef and now a pub­lished po­et. Soul­spec­tion is the ti­tle of Borel's first book of po­et­ry and it will be on the shelves of book­shops by the end of the month.

Soul­spec­tion will have its of­fi­cial launch on No­vem­ber 27 and will be avail­able at Char­ran's Book­store na­tion­wide. Borel will al­so be the fea­ture speak­er at the com­mem­o­ra­tion of Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Day 2016, to be held on Oc­to­ber 15 at the AV Room, Nalis, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, at 6 pm.

The daugh­ter of pro­mot­er Rox­anne Browne-Philips and Jean Borel, Borel was chris­tened Michelle El­sa but al­so an­swers to Fek­erte Se­lassie and at­tend­ed St Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege. She cred­its her up­bring­ing and child­hood with al­low­ing her to be­come the re­spect­ed pro­fes­sion­al she is to­day.

To­day a much lis­tened-to broad­cast­er, Borel spoke of those who in­flu­enced her. She said: "I had the plea­sure of grow­ing up with my grand­par­ents, John and El­sa Borel, and I had so many won­der­ful teach­ers at St Fran­cois who tru­ly helped to mold me and gave me the en­cour­age­ment I need­ed to be­come a broad­cast­er.

"The teacher who dis­cov­ered my tal­ent was my Ge­og­ra­phy teacher, Mrs Gomez. The teacher who fu­eled my love for Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture was the in­spir­ing Ms Bald­win. It was at St Fran­cois that I start­ed host­ing shows held by the school. This was a great ve­hi­cle that gave me the dri­ve I need­ed to be­come a broad­cast­er.

"Thank­ful­ly, I have had the priv­i­lege of be­ing en­cour­aged by a melange of fig­ures who gave their all to their craft, and their pas­sion was con­ta­gious. I can­not for­get men­tors like Tony Lee, Dale Enoch, Adri­an Don Mo­ra, Carl Beaver Hen­der­son and Ian Eligon, not to men­tion both of my grand­moth­ers–El­sa Borel and Yvonne Browne–and my moth­er Rox­anne.

"A child learns not on­ly by what they are told, but most­ly by what they see. I saw my moth­er writ­ing down any idea that came to her mind, at any hour in the morn­ing. I saw her put it in­to ac­tion, I saw a woman who was pas­sion­ate and filled with so much love that went be­yond fam­i­ly and ex­tend­ed to even strangers.

"Rox­anne Browne, my moth­er, has a nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to speak her mind with­out of­fend­ing. Her pa­tri­o­tism has led to the in­tro­duc­tion of many lo­cal names with­in the mu­sic in­dus­try. More im­por­tant­ly, she nev­er looked back, but she moved for­ward. Her ideas she nev­er slept on, but en­sured they woke up with her. De­spite how busy she was, she al­ways had time to lis­ten to my po­et­ry. How­ev­er, maybe the pas­sion with­in us is be­ing passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.

"The same could be said of my grand­moth­er, Yvonne Browne. When you wake up, en­sure your dreams wake up with you. It is dif­fi­cult for me to state who I am, with­out be­ing thank­ful for who backed me. I start­ed writ­ing at eight years of age and won a writ­ing com­pe­ti­tion held by one of our lo­cal news­pa­pers. I con­tin­ued writ­ing and, at times, have found my­self–when the writ­ing bug caught me–not be­ing able to eat, sleep or do any­thing but en­gulf my­self in it. Each one I car­ried to my moth­er like a gift. Even now, at 33 years of age, when I write I let her hear it, and she would al­ways say, 'go write some more'."

Dai­ly, Borel con­tin­ues to as­pire and reach for the stars. Her quest is to in­spire every­one she in­ter­acts with, whether in per­son or on the air.

"I have been a broad­cast­er for the past 16 years, the last ten years 107.7FM," she said.

"Mu­sic for Life has been my on-air home. In ad­di­tion to that, I am the brand man­ag­er for Pop­eye's. I am present­ly a stu­dent at Costaatt.

"In every­thing, my great­est ac­com­plish­ment is hav­ing the trea­sure of three amaz­ing chil­dren who I re­fer to as my Faith, Hope and Love, be­cause of the pow­er­ful mean­ing of their names. They are Eli­jah, Chay­daa and Faith Thor­pe. We live in Ch­agua­nas. I love bak­ing and any­thing cre­ative.

"What con­sis­tent­ly mo­ti­vates me is know­ing that I can do all things through Christ Je­sus who strength­ens me. I pay at­ten­tion to de­tail. I be­lieve if there is a de­sire in your heart, that it is there for a rea­son, and you must put your pas­sion in­to ac­tion. Our life is in vain if we do not share of our­selves and while giv­en the breath of life, use it each day to be bet­ter. Just one thing a day to get you clos­er to your goal–just one."

Of her book Soul­spec­tion, Borel shared that she has in­clud­ed some pieces which she wrote when she was just 15.

Borel spoke about her po­et­ry process: "I am very much an em­path, so al­though it may ap­pear as though I speak from a first per­son stand­point in some pieces, it may be some­one else's pain that I car­ried with me (and am ex­press­ing).

"Some pieces are re­flec­tive of some of my per­son­al en­coun­ters. Oth­er work with­in this col­lec­tion touch­es on gen­er­al sub­ject ar­eas, while some po­ems are thoughts that kept hav­ing a par­ty in my mind. I held on to these pieces for such a long time and now that more po­et­ry is grow­ing in­side me, I am al­low­ing this out," she said.