If Only the Dust Would Settle

About the Book

About the Author

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She considers herself a citizen of the world having lived and taught in Liberia, West Africa (1976 -1990), England (1990 -1991) and in Switzerland since 1991. She writes poems and short stories which attempt to capture the atmosphere and depict the ordinary people in countries she has lived. She wields two idioms – standard English to confront the modern world and dialect to explore the folkloric elements in her West Indian heritage.

She has published four collections of poems, Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit, Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio USA, 1974, Palaver, Downtown Poets Co-op, New York, USA, 1978, Two Faces, Two Phases, Speed-O-Graphics, Monrovia, Liberia, 1984 and Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Sabanoh Press, Monrovia, Liberia,1989.

She has been published in The Caribbean Writer, Women Writers A-Zine, Sea Breeze: Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings, Jigsaw: Writers Works Bern, Calabash: Journal of Contemporary Arts and Letters, Library Focus by Friends of the Antigua Public Library-New York, Seasoning for the Mortar: Virgin Islands Writing in The Caribbean Writer, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review: Poetry of The Caribbean, Mind the Gap, Writers’ Works, Bern, Kariba Fortella: An Anthology of Caribbean Short Stories, Anthology 2000, Writers’ Works Bern, Tickling Along Free, Mini Sagas, Daily Telegraph, World Wide Writers International, Yellow Cedars Blooming: An Anthology of Virgin Islands Poetry, Lucid Stone, Compost: A Journal of Art, Literature and Ideas, The Caribbean Writer, Sisters of Caliban: Contemporary Women Poets in the Caribbean, Anthology of Pan-Caribbean Poetry, Liberia: Leben Wo der Pfeffer Wächts, and Revista Review Inter-Americana.

She has received awards from the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, the Cuyahoga Writers Workshop and Stauffacher English Short Story Competition/Switzerland.