Biography

Vladimir Lucien is a writer, actor and critic from St. Lucia. His writing has been published in The Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, the PN Review, BIM magazine, Washington Square Review, Caribbean Beat and other journals, as well as an anthology of Caribbean poetry and prose entitled Beyond Sangre Grande, edited by Cyril Dabydeen. He was awarded first prize in the poetry category of the Small Axe prize 2013 and is the winner of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for his debut collection of poetry, Sounding Ground, published by Peepal Tree Press in May, 2014. Sounding Ground was also shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Caribbean Literature in 2015. Some of Lucien’s poems have been translated into Dutch and published in the literary journal Tortuca. As well, his work has been translated into Italian, in the journal El Ghibli, and Mandarin. Lucien is also the co-editor of the anthology Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of St. Lucia, which was published in November 2014, and the screenwriter of the documentary The Merikins, which premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2013. From January to May 2016, Lucien served as writer in residence at the University of the West Indies (Mona Campus, Jamaica). In February, he was hailed, as part of black history month, by CBC books based in Canada as a young black writer to watch. Pamela Mordecai, who recommended him highly to CBC books, states that “His poems are hefty, accomplished and underived, rooted in the Creole cultures [as Lucian points out, there are, in fact, two] of his home island, enjoying its orality and deploying its languages with aplomb. And—eureka!—the poems have none of the determined inaccessibility that discourages the ordinary reader. If one of these days he finds himself, like Yevtushenko, reading poems to arenas filled with thousands, I won't be surprised.” Lucien has been featured at many regional and international festivals, including the Calabash International Literary Festival, the Read My World Festival in Amsterdam, Jaipur Literary Festival, the Brooklyn Book Fair and Miami Book Fair, as well as, most recently, an exhibition-cum-conference held in Wedding, Berlin, in Germany. He is one of the major young voices in Caribbean literature today.




Video Collection

In March 2017, St. Lucian poet Vladimir Lucien was recorded reading his debut and award-winning collection of poetry, Sounding Ground. These recordings add to emerging collections at MUN which focus on understanding the performative aspects of Caribbean and Caribbean-Canadian writing and which grow teaching resources for the field of Caribbean scholarship. The project was produced by CITL’s Media Services unit at Memorial University and was initiated by Executive Producer of this project, Dr. Stephanie McKenzie (Associate Professor, English Program, Grenfell Campus, Memorial University). Funding was provided by Memorial University’s Cross-Campus Initiative Fund. CITL provided its production services as a gift in-kind. CITL’s (formerly DELTS) production credits include Adrian Collins (Producer); Mark Shallow, Ben Smith, Thomas Humphries (Production Technologists); Paul Hayward (Video Editor); and Benjy Kean (Multimedia Specialist).

This video collection is being shared with the world under a Creative Commons License. Please contact Donna Downey, Manager, Media Services, CITL, for more information. 709-864-4061 donnad@mun.ca




© CITL, 2018