Cecil Gray is a distinguished educator who has compiled several anthologies of regional literature, and helped to pioneer the inclusion of Caribbean literature in the school curriculum - this is his first personal collection. Cecil Gray has a very fine ear and an understated ease which distinguishes him from the bustle of much contemporary verse. His poems are modest - almost gentleman-amateur - in their tone, but they are nicely judged and technically well-achieved. Particularly striking are his evocations of Port of Spain under curfew and at Carnival, poems which feel like pastorals.
