So­ca and steel­pan came to­geth­er to en­ter­tain and en­gage thou­sands gath­ered at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah on Sun­day Feb­ru­ary 1, as BH En­ter­tain­ment host­ed the an­nu­al “Pan On The Greens” ex­pe­ri­ence.

There’s a huge chance your favourite pow­er so­ca tunes for 2026 were pro­duced by the same per­son. In fact, many be­lieve he has per­fect­ed the “for­mu­la.” From Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Still A Road Man and Machel Mon­tano’s En­core, to Mi­cal Te­ja and Patrice Roberts’ Cap­i­tal, Xplic­it­Mevon (Mevon Sood­een) is pow­er­ing through the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son.

Be­fore the book­ings, the ra­dio play and the in­ter­na­tion­al calls, San­dra Em­manuel, pop­u­lar­ly known as Queen Steam, said there were nights filled with tears, hunger and prayer.

Car­ni­val Is Fash­ion 2 de­liv­ered an elec­tri­fy­ing show­case of cre­ativ­i­ty, at­tract­ing a larg­er au­di­ence than last year and trans­form­ing the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah Grand Stage in­to a vi­brant cel­e­bra­tion of fash­ion, mu­sic and mas­quer­ade.

He would prob­a­bly not ap­prove of the com­par­i­son, but meet­ing pan con­nois­seur and his­to­ri­an Ian Franklin at a pa­n­yard the morn­ing af­ter com­pet­i­tive dra­ma is like mo­men­tar­i­ly oc­cu­py­ing li­brary space—soft, mea­sured tones, po­lite re­straint, and a vast­ness of read­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble knowl­edge and wis­dom.

These are un­doubt­ed­ly two of the most pop­u­lar lines for the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son, cour­tesy of Full Blown’s hit song Re­spect­ful­ly Yours.

Be­fore he be­came the voice wak­ing up the na­tion on The Boom 94.1, Kwe­si “Su­pahype” Lee was al­ready telling Caribbean sto­ries—qui­et­ly, vi­su­al­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly—through a cam­era lens.

As a gy­nae­co­log­i­cal on­col­o­gist, cer­vi­cal can­cer to me is not just a sta­tis­tic. It is a di­ag­no­sis I de­liv­er all too of­ten and a sto­ry that does not al­ways end as we hoped.

At 33, Naki­ta Hy­atali stands as one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most ver­sa­tile cre­atives, with a ca­reer span­ning fash­ion de­sign, car­ni­val pro­duc­tion, and cre­ative di­rec­tion. Her jour­ney has been shaped by pa­tience, ed­u­ca­tion, and hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence, a path she de­scribes as de­lib­er­ate rather than rushed.

For many women, painful pe­ri­ods have been con­sid­ered a nor­mal part of life. Young girls are of­ten told to “bear with it,” while old­er women silent­ly tol­er­ate dis­com­fort month af­ter month. But as a gy­nae­col­o­gist, I want to make one thing very clear: se­vere or dis­abling pe­ri­od pain is not nor­mal and should nev­er be ig­nored.

Gilberte Farah O’Sul­li­van (22/12/1971–25/1 2026) was a Trinidad-born po­et, ed­u­cat­ed in Trinidad, the UK, and the US, with an MFA in Cre­ative Fic­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Her work was pub­lished across the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca, the UK and Aus­tralia. On Jan­u­ary 25, 2026, she died of a stroke in Brighton, sur­round­ed by her three chil­dren, Rhi­an­non (22), Sinead (Max) (19) and Conor (15). This trib­ute is of­fered by her col­leagues, writ­ers and po­ets, in memo­r­i­al.

As a graph­ic de­sign­er by train­ing, she has built a sol­id, 15-year ca­reer in graph­ic de­sign and al­so ex­pand­ed her cre­ativ­i­ty or­gan­i­cal­ly in­to fash­ion and cos­tume de­sign, where she has spent the last decade bring­ing char­ac­ters and con­cepts to life. Win­ches­ter is al­so a wife and moth­er of two, roles that, like her work, de­mand her en­er­gy, de­vot­ed pres­ence and con­stant care. A lover of colour, tex­ture and trav­el, her cre­ative jour­ney places vi­brance and evo­lu­tion at the core, and she has re­cent­ly tak­en her tal­ents in­to a new field with the cre­ation of her self-care jour­nal, Root­ed.