The Animated Universe

The Animated Universe is the long-awaited debut of a seasoned poet who has traveled the world honing her craft and, in the process, settling into the assurance and confidence in her voice. These poems reflect her movement, but above all they speak to her core belief in the power of empathy and compassion as aesthetic markers. In “signs” she writes, “Everywhere I go/ I see the people I love in the faces of strangers,..” Her poems range across three modes of seeing: the ode that reveals her penchant for finding beauty in the unusual, in the ordinary and in the disquieting things of the world; her legends, which are the mythologizing of daily life that only great calypsonians and natural storytellers are able to achieve; and finally, her lyric disrobing of her heart, her soul, and her body—a sacrifice she makes with heart because of her strong conviction that the sharing of self is a healing quality of poetry: “I am a figment/ of God’s imagination. / I am more than/ I say. I am./ I am who I am/ becoming.”

Samantha Thornhill is a globally-traveled poet, educator and children’s author from the twin island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. After graduating with an MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia, Samantha served for a decade as poetry professor at The Juilliard School in New York City.