By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 157 (May/June 2019)
Back to St Lucia | Escape
A childhood visit to St Lucia was a life-changing experience for Joshua Surtees — and an introduction to the Caribbean, where he’d later make his home. Returning to St Lucia after thirty years, what would he learn about the island and himself?
Immerse, Music, People, Trinidad and Tobago
By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 142 (November/December 2016)
Ever-blooming Calypso Rose
On a grey, drizzly night in Rouen, a packed concert tent is rocking to a calypso beat. It’s an odd juxtaposition. Rouen — a...
Immerse, People, United Kingdom, Dominica
By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 140 (July/August 2016)
Patricia Scotland: “I wanted to do”
Born in Dominica in 1955, to a Dominican mother and an Antiguan father, Patricia Scotland was the last of her parents’ twelve children to...
Immerse, Culture, People, Guyana
By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 136 (November/December 2015)
Baroness Valerie Amos: Wakenaam to Westminster
The way Baroness Valerie Amos speaks — in an accent more Kentish than anything else — you get the sense that the extraordinary...
Immerse, Culture, Music, History, United Kingdom
By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 134 (July/August 2015)
The Queen’s kaiso
When British calypsonian Alexander D Great heard calypso for the first time, it wasn’t in Trinidad, where he was born in Belmont, the...
Immerse, Literature, People, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago
By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 131 (January/February 2015)
Melanie Abrahams: “I like Jamaica, but I’m more Trini-minded”
There were always books around the house growing up — Anansi’s fables, Enid Blyton, Winnie-the-Pooh, fairy tales about soucouyants and...
Immerse, Film and Television, Theatre and Dance, People, St. Lucia
By Joshua Surtees ● Issue 130 (November/December 2014)
St. Lucia’s Joseph Marcell: “Some say it’s luck”
There’s a point in King Lear when I ask, “Does any here know me?” And at least once a week someone in the audience calls out:...