Poems by CATHERINE-ESTHER COWIE

Having made both poetry and fiction contributions to TC, the multitalented Catherine-Esther Cowie returns to us this month with highlights from her debut poetry collection Heirloom, forthcoming from Carcanet Press on April 24, 2025.

Publisher’s Note

Moving from colonial to post-colonial St. Lucia, this debut collection brings to light the inheritances of four generations of women, developing monologues, lyrics, and narrative poems which enable us to see how past dysfunction, tyranny, and terror structure the shapes of women’s lives, and what they hand down to one another.

Uneasy inheritances are just the starting point for this debut’s remarkable meditations: Should the stories of the past be told? Do they bring redemption or ruin? What are the costs of saying what happened? Beguiling and cathartic, Catherine-Esther Cowie’s powerful, formally inventive poems reckon with the past even as they elegize and celebrate her subjects.