Cindergirl at the La Basse
At the Port-of-Spain dump
tonight, I fed the inferno
a thatch of your letters
under which I roofed for years,
even though it could not near
protect me from the draft of rain.
This is the scene when it rages
awake and brings back down
the daybroken hours
on unhallowed ground.
This is the level to which
one must stoop
to pat on the back
this patient pot-hound.
I watched the garbage boys
toss the stacks you left me—
enough to stitch a faerie gown.
For miles, I had to pursue them
to see how your words might end,
a one-woman dumb procession—
until we reached the place where
corbeaux scavenge tattered lovers’ pleas:
Speak La Basse if you speak love.
At night old tyres burn, joining
your once pristine affections.
A flame winds up—a Shakti dancer’s
hands invoking deepest cloud—
until you cannot discern
paper from mirrors.
What I felt in that pyre
I may live to regret:
the terrible tinder,
the stench unkind.
The echoes razed—
“Why blaze your own history?”
I neglected reply. For years onward
I carried the flambeaux,
uproariously burning.
Gilberte J Farah
22 December 1971 - 25 January 2026
Sea Blast and Other Ravages
I watched your funeral on Zoom. Heard voices. Echoes of you. Dull pewter light. The camera was fixed high and slightly to one side. The priest moved in and out of range. The coffin crossed the screen once, a head shifting. I was in my kitchen in the Caribbean, the laptop open, the light too bright around me.
Your Catholic Mass in the UK unfolded in its order: readings, homily, and prayers for the dead. The language was measured. It promised rest. It promised mercy. More than that, meaning. It came. The Guyanese woman who wept openly and embraced your children; your brother’s halting steps, as if unsure how to walk without you; your fiery, beautiful daughter, Rhiannon, who designed the cover of your poetry book, her voice carrying yours, as if you had risen out of that closed coffin.
From Rhiannon O’Sullivan, 22, eldest child of Gilberte J Farah:
“My mother, Gilberte, was an electric kind of woman. You could feel her presence when she walked in a room. She was the kind of person you only meet once in your life and are drawn to. Raw, unapologetic and real—that’s my mother. She guided my life and fought fiercely for her kids and the things she cared about. One of those things was writing; day and night she’d be putting poems and short stories together. In our home, she had two laptops—one upstairs and one downstairs—so every second could be spent writing, no matter where she was in the house. Her writing was complex and filled with deeper hidden meaning; her work reflected the hardships in her life, told through her poetic Caribbean tongue. Even her texts to scold me into packing the dishwasher or moving the washing into the dryer came structured like a poem—always grammatically perfect, with appropriate spacing. I believe her artistic side trickled down to me. I am my mother’s copy in almost every way. I know she will never leave me. She left us her kids, part of her soul. I feel her fire and passion in my heart and hear her voice when I have decisions to make. My mother could never be silenced, even now. Although she has left us, it is her words and writings that are immortal. Not only was my mother a pretty face, she was the most incredible mind I have ever known.”
From Anthony Farah – Brother:
“Gilberte is a name some find challenging to pronounce, with a French and Germanic background meaning ‘Bright Promise.’ Gil, known as Pink Poui, was born with bright red hair that announced her arrival to the world. A child who smiled often and was happy to be alive, she learned from life’s trials and valued family, education, teaching and community. She loved literature and words, and to write and express herself—from acting in the St Bernadette’s Prep-School Christmas play to singing along with the radio while making tapes of the Top 40. From Trinidad to the USA to Europe, Gil, a devout Catholic, sat with anyone who would talk, teach or learn. Her mother, a Chookolingo, came from a writing family. Her poetic vocabulary was dense enough to send readers to a thesaurus or dictionary of local slang. Gilberte grew up with the grooves of 70s and 80s rock. Gil was a rock star and often wanted to embody that spirit. With auburn hair, guitar lessons, art classes with Jackie Hinkson, writing for Pope John Paul II, Pink Poui embodied the meaning of her name: bright promise. Gilberte was loving, empathetic, honest, loyal—she believed things could be better, that we could forgive even when we can’t forget. The world is better for her having been here.”
Isobel Farah – Sister:
“Gilberte was artistic and worldly. Her pronunciation had the dramatic flair of a Trinidadian British socialite. As a lover of literature, her writing impressed me. I would boast that my sister—with flamboyant red hair and sun-sprinkled freckles—was a ‘real poet’; she could capture words that shone like iridescent fish and weave them together like silky nets across shores.”
Gillie. Hope the damn casket is not cold. Your makeup right. Hear this.
A flashback: sitting under a tent on the grounds of Yale University, listening to Trinidad-born poet Anthony Vahni Capildeo after the Wyndham Campbell Prize. The light falling through leaves. The audience held in that charged stillness after a poem. Then a siren went off. Capildeo stopped and asked for silence—for space, not for the poetry but the siren.
We were told: think of the siren. Think of the person inside the ambulance. Poetry is not separate from that sound. It is bound to human distress. It listens for it. It answers it.
You, Gilberte Jasmine Farah (1971–2026), had children, a home, an MFA from UWI, had submitted your novel My Darling Indra, and your first full-length collection, Sea Blast, was published posthumously in 2026 by Lost Souls Events. You drank mimosas on a boat.
But, as TS Eliot said, that was not it at all.
I’ve featured over 60 women on this page. A three-part series on a poet unpublished in your lifetime may sound excessive. But with you I understood that encrypted in each poem, story and novel is a siren call. With you, we only saw the siren’s face.
In your poem Cindergirl at the La Basse, you stand at the Port-of-Spain dump and feed an inferno with letters you once lived beneath. A thatch. A roof made of words. It never kept out the rain. You follow the garbage boys hauling away the stacks—a one-woman dumb procession—until you reach the place where corbeaux scavenge lovers’ pleas.
Speak La Basse if you speak love. Speak of what it becomes when it is over. Speak of what must be burned.
When I looked at the screen again, the coffin was gone. You were gone.
But. I heard your siren call. There were hardly any women at your funeral. We heard, but didn’t listen.
For the women who saw the raw, unending pressure and pain of your private life, the publishing that evaded you, your courage—in highest heels, crimson lips, red hair, boots and rock songs, sexy dresses—you were laughing at pain. Bounce me, nah.
So at your death, we learn. Don’t collapse. We hear you. Save yourself. Nobody else will.
Gilberte Jasmine Farah. Poet, siren. We salute you.
Ira Mathur is a freelance journalist and Guardian columnist.
