Anjali Bose ‘20
Tim Gavin, the head chaplain of the Episcopal Academy, has published a small collection of poems, Lyrics from the Central Plateau, revolving around his experiences with the people and culture of Haiti. This was not his first experience writing poetry or being published. “I’ve been writing poetry since my sophomore year in high school, and had my first poem published when I was a freshman in college,” Father Gavin explained. “The poem was called ‘Pennsylvania Pathway’ with, I think, the publication Pegasus. Not a lot of people read poetry, but there are many online journals and small press journals. I send my poems out often. And I love to read lots of poetry. I taught in the English Department for years, and obviously taught poetry. So I have a lot of experience with poetry, particularly reading poetry.” Some of Father Gavin’s favorite poets include Gerald Stern, Linda Greg, T.S Eliot, Wordsworth, and Keats–among others.
His experiences in Haiti specifically inspired him to write Lyrics from the Central Plateau. “It just sort of happened, that I started writing about it. They just kept coming. I think there are twenty one poems in that booklet, and I probably wrote close to two poems just written in the Central Plateau. Central Plateau is a region in Haiti, and the inspiration just comes from the experiences of the people there. The poems are an attempt to have the reader see Haiti through the eyes of the people. The speaker of the poem is trying to represent or be a voice for the people. That’s part of the flow in this particular group of poems,” Gavin said. His main inspiration came directly from his everyday experiences both witnessing and interacting with the Haitian community.
“It’s so raw in Haiti, the experience. One of my friends who’s a priest, that’s travelled throughout Haiti for many years, calls it ‘a soul scrubbing experience.’ To me that’s poetry. Poetry’s a soul scrubbing experience. So it kind of makes sense that Haiti became the topic and the subject of a group of poems that I’ve been working on,” Gavin stated. The Haiti trip has also inspired and affected many different people besides Gavin. Several students at the Episcopal Academy travel to Haiti each year and come back with their own special experiences.
Skylar Lingo ‘19 recalled, “One of my favorite experiences was when Chaplain Gavin bought everyone in the town sandwiches. There was this one girl who came up to me and offered to share her sandwich with me.” Lingo added, “It was just really sweet and cute because she was so selfless and giving even though it was probably her only meal for the day.”
“I think the resilience in the people is amazing,” explained Gavin when asked about the Haitian communities he encountered. “The people have very little, they face a lot of hardship. They’re farmers but they don’t have topsoil. Yet they somehow make it work. The amazing thing about the Haitian people is that everything they do, they do with joy, especially up in the more rural areas. They really are full of gratitude for what they have. Of course they have needs, like everybody else, but they don’t focus on what they want to have, they’re really thankful for what they do have.” Gavin explained what he has learned from the Haitian people: “And they enjoy community, they enjoy school, and they enjoy church. Also within the community, family is very important. Those aspects really inspire me in terms of my own gratitude for the things I have instead of focusing on the things I don’t have.”