Trinidadian poet Gilberte Jasmine Farah (O’Sullivan) (1971–2026) went into a coma on January 11 and died in Brighton, UK on the 25 from a massive stroke hours before Sea Blast, her debut collection, was published.
The cover artwork for Sea Blast was created by Farah’s daughter, Rhiannon O’Sullivan, herself an artist, for a work Gilberte never had the chance to unbox.
Publishing, for Farah, as it is for many writers, was as sacred as her children, as prayer—as close to God as she could get and as hard to grasp. Her work was published internationally in journals, but the publishing deal evaded her in her lifetime. I’d often remind her her work was moving towards greatness: Sylvia Plath, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Anne Sexton, Jean Rhys.
Farah didn’t look away from pain; she burrowed inside it searching for poems. Over time, she sent me dozens of unfinished poems. We waited for it to happen, knowing how hard it is to be published, so much harder for poetry. It happened. Somewhat late.
I hope she knew she did it; her work rose even as she sank under the accrued damage of over a decade. But her poetry survived. We must tenderly nurture it till it takes flight. ( Go to Lostsoulevents.com to purchase a copy)
Many of our best poets and writers believed in Farah. Among them is Shivanee Ramlochan, poet, essayist, and author of Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, who has written a review of Farah's published poems for this Sunday's Bookshelf.
“Writing as Gilberte J Farah, the poet published extensively in Caribbean and international literary journals. Her first full-length collection, Sea Blast, was published posthumously in 2026 by Lost Souls Events. The titular poem, Sea Blast, drew my attention years ago when it was first issued in 2018 – it was my oceanic entryway into a deep and sustained appreciation of what Farah could do with language. Gilberte Farah O’Sullivan should still be with us. How fortunate we are to still be able to read her poems.
An ornamented, baroque exploration of the relationship between a sea-wife and her maritime husband, Sea Blast brings the immensity and intensity of island ocean living to the reader, promising devastation for those who do not heed the sea’s terrible power. Farah excels at this mirroring of larger-than-life landscapes against smaller, domestic human behaviours, showing the immanence that resides within both.
To live as a poet is already to have your heart open to a range of intensities. Farah’s work frequently displayed how fixed her attentions were on all creations, from human to beast. No creature lived in her work who was not susceptible to the most tender and studied fascination; one of the strongest examples of this is Lady Leatherback, first released in 2018.
It is impossible to read this poem without a deepened thankfulness for the turtles that come, unerringly, season upon season, to Trinidad’s shores. How easy it is to take such majestic beings for granted – how, with such sensitivity and sharpness of vision, Farah reminds us not to lose focus of the natural world we have inherited.
Love, perhaps the hardest of states to write about, is at once so complex and so simple. Farah was a poet attuned to this reality. None of her love poems was cloying or maudlin; they sang with the bittersweetness of lives fully lived to the marrow, of the tempestuous states of alienation and passion produced by those who believe or know themselves forever intertwined.
Reading Sunstroke Lesson, first published in 2015, is an object lesson in the impermanence of desire, told in the voice of a speaker courting a foreign lover whose difference heightens their attractiveness. No matter your age or station, reading this and Farah’s other love poems will immerse you in the crucible of your own love stories, whether they are riotously happy or ruinous in their frustrations.
The truth is that I have never read a poem by Gilberte J Farah that did not teach me something, or make me humbly grateful to be a lover of poetry myself. I will miss her voice, and be thankful always that we have so much of her work to draw upon, to enrich our own lives.”
The poetry of Gilberte J Farah
From Sea Blast
Little fish scholars, twinkle
at your calves, awaiting oracles.
How easy to forget this is not your home.
Every tide wants to lap you up,
Drift wants to lull your body,
Hear your glug for mercy.
Sea-wife, drunk with you,
wore down your reason.
You curse this blasted island woman,
wild in her motion, not looking on horizons.
Put her to bed to sleep it off; start the absolution.
You make the sign of the mast.
You will marry her into submission,
soak in the blue-green scene,
unbraid the helix,
chlorinate her to zenith.
Bowlegged, still finding your gait,
you come to dinner
with scrolls of perishable ideas
no one cares to unfurl.
Your rhetoric is tiresome.
You are spoiling the buffet.
They will put you out the party
because you cannot reform the sea.
ii.
You drift to bed, lonesome wood,
one time used for beating,
knowing your bride will leave,
who was once the outside woman.
Nausea comes awakening,
which means she cannot stand
for all you have done to her island.
Sleep engulfs you
but does you no favours.
You heave at dreamers and their dreaming.
For dreaming means no motion;
too much motion has her sickening.
Then comes that awful feeling,
knowing all substance
will come to sand.
---
From Lady Leatherback
Lowlands, Tobago
O, Mother of Infinite Motion!
Paint your masterwork strokes.
Your swirling sculls, your deep-league dives.
Your Mabe necklace of eggs found
in this treasure beach out-shiver
the joys of pirate booty, predate Celtic kings,
and the sharkish language of acquisition.
Ageless sculpture, no revenge swims
through your cool blood, though
no human has been a concrete friend.
No fortress ransoms your display.
Your body of sea-carved living stone
disturbs no bay.
Lady Colossus, met at bony moon’s return,
help us read the map of order stitched
on your back, the tectonic slab of progress,
broken free from the blueprint of Pangea.
Mainlanders worship shaky monuments,
while leatherback turns her gaze
indifferent to all human matter,
follows on the bleary dust of moonlight,
oversees evolution in the currents of constancy,
in the currents of constant sea.
---
From Sunstroke Lesson
We were lovers at the cineplex,
too young for the opera.
We held hands; water pooled
between the branches of our palms,
cooled by ninety minutes’ imaginary winter.
Daylight burned your sockets.
You never wore sunglasses,
said you wanted the heat full on.
In the day, blondes brazen as sunlight
asked about your continental accent.
Their easy attention intrigued you,
who came from a place of dank.
Unhitched from their families young,
they longed to shake wax from warm wings.
My father had left to explore imaginary lines,
left us overexposed, nearing sunstroke.
Unseasoned, before I could acclimatise,
you came.
Equatorial, I sought warmth
and should have been more afraid of you.
But I liked the balm of your winter accent,
your eyes half-turned down,
half-earth in shadow,
your thoughts always with summer,
your trade-wind breath on my neck.
Driving home, equidistant,
looking for direction, I knew I had
no right to pierce you with flags.
Unworldly, I wanted you here
but was too shaded to concede,
too green to cede.
End of excerpt by Gilberte J Farah, chosen by Shivanee Ramlochan, whose collection Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection
Sea Blast By Gilberte J Farah is available on Lostsoulevents.com
The funeral of Gilberte J Farah (O’Sullivan) will take place on February 12, 2026, at 2 pm at St George’s Retreat Chapel, Ditchling Common, Burgess Hill RH15 0SF.- UK & live-streamed on YouTube.
IRA MATHUR is a Trinidad Guardian columnist and winner of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction.
