SINT MAARTEN (GREAT BAY) - Environmentalist Tadzio Yuko Bervoets has added author to his credentials with the release of Lamio: Stories and Poems, a debut collection of fiction and poetry published this week by House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP).
The 174-page book brings together short stories and poems, including the title story, “Lamio,” which explores a descent into madness involving several characters. HNP president Jacqueline Sample said the story is substantial enough to stand as a book in its own right.
The collection also features “Cecile,” a love story set in post-revolutionary Haiti, and “Trevor,” a tourism thriller set at a beachfront hotel in Great Bay, St. Martin. “Who knew, beyond the occasional published poem, that an entire book was taking shape?” Sample said.
“The wait is over for those who had an inkling, and the cat is out of the bag for everyone else.” Literature professor Christina Kullberg describes the collection as “A sea of prose, and within it an archipelago of poems… dreamlike voices of human and nonhuman ancestors whispering and singing through Caribbean submarine unity.
Lamio: Stories and Poems harbors beauty and brutality, creative care and hope.” Bervoets’s coral reef conservation and marine management work has taken him from Tanzania to Bermuda.
He is a sought-after speaker at Caribbean conferences, where he shares his expertise on sharks, marine ecology and conservation. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of South Florida and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, respectively.
His work in coral reef conservation, marine park management and regional environmental leadership includes being part of the team establishing the St. Maarten Man of War Shoal Marine Protected Area.
Bervoets co-founded the Caribbean Shark Coalition and is director of the Alligator Head Foundation in Jamaica. His environmental work has received island, regional, and international media coverage.
His literary contributions appear in Where I See The Sun: Contemporary Poetry in St. Martin (2013), Writing for Our Lives: A Caribbean Climate Justice Anthology (2025), and the Barbados-based BIM: Arts for the 21st Century (2025). Lamio: Stories and Poems is available at Arnia’s Bookstore, at the Zagersgut Road/Bush Road junction in St. Martin.
The book will soon be available online at libroslatinos.com.
Tadzio Bervoets, environmentalist, short-story writer, poet and author of Lamio: Stories and Poems.
