Liseli A. Fitzpatrick

Liseli Fitzpatrick, Ph.D. is a Trinidadian poet and professor of Africana Cosmologies and Ontologies in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, MA. In 2018, she became the first PhD in African and African American Studies at The Ohio State University, OH. Her reverent writings embody themes of ancestral wisdom, legacy, water expanses and the earth. Liseli says her passion for poetry was conceived in her mother’s womb. She combines prose and poetry to evoke spiritual consciousness, compassion and feelings of belonging and finds synergy between science and art. Liseli upholds, “to draw a line or divide between the arts and science is to offend God.” Further, she states “the heart cannot exist in the absence of art, an artless society is a heartless society.” It is upon these axes that her poetic inspiration revolves. She values and enjoys family, music, her plants, students and inexhaustible acts of kindness.