ELIOT (EILEEN) BLISS was a Creole writer born in 1903 in Kingston, Jamaica, a British colony at the time. She died, forgotten and neglected, in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, in December 1990. At her side was her lifelong companion, Patricia Allen-Burns, who had supported and taken care of her for 60 years.
The poems collected here were written from 1922 to 1931, and were found in 2004 in the apartment she had shared with Ms Allen-Burns.These poems reflect different stages and periods in Eliot Bliss’s life: There are poems that bring to mind the Caribbean, where she was born and whose memory she would always carry with her; others are dedicated to spiritual life; some to important literary figures, women who had an influence on her life.
MICHELA A. CALDERARO, an Associate Editor of "Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters", teaches English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Trieste (Italy). Dr. Calderaro, whose critical works include a book on Ford Madox Ford and numerous articles on British, American and Anglophone Caribbean writers, is currently working on Creole writer Eliot (Eileen) Bliss’s biography.
The poems collected here were written from 1922 to 1931, and were found in 2004 in the apartment she had shared with Ms Allen-Burns.These poems reflect different stages and periods in Eliot Bliss’s life: There are poems that bring to mind the Caribbean, where she was born and whose memory she would always carry with her; others are dedicated to spiritual life; some to important literary figures, women who had an influence on her life.
MICHELA A. CALDERARO, an Associate Editor of "Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters", teaches English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Trieste (Italy). Dr. Calderaro, whose critical works include a book on Ford Madox Ford and numerous articles on British, American and Anglophone Caribbean writers, is currently working on Creole writer Eliot (Eileen) Bliss’s biography.
