Search results for ""author geoffrey philp""

"Without losing the joy of play or the play of the rhythms, Dub Wise celebrates the burdens and delights of love, friendships and the responsibility of being at home in the world. Geoffrey Philp's new book is witty, playful, gracious and, yes, wise. An enjoyable read from beginning to end." Olive SeniorGeoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami. He maintains a blog @ geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com

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El nino stirs clouds over the Pacific. Flashing TV screens urge a calm that no one believes. The police beat a slouched body, crumpled like a fist of kleenex. The news racks are crowded with stories of pestilence, war and rumours of war. The children, once sepia-faced cherubim, mutate to monsters that eat, eat, eat. You notice a change in your body's conversation with itself, and in the garden the fire ants burrow into the flesh of the fruit.Geoffrey Philps's poems stare into the dark heart of a world where hurricanes, both meteorological and metaphorical, threaten you to the last cell. But the sense of dread also reveals what is most precious in life, for the dark and accidental are put in the larger context of season and human renewal, and Hurricane Center returns always to the possibilities of redemption and joy.In the voices of Jamaican prophets, Cuban exiles, exotic dancers, drunks, race-track punters, canecutters, rastamen, middle-class householders and screw-face ghetto sufferers, Geoffrey Philp writes poetry which is both intimately human and cosmic in scale. On the airwaves between Miami and Kingston, the rhythms of reggae and mambo dance through these poems.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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Jason Lumley is in a Miami bar when he sees a newsflash reporting the murder of his politician father, Albert Lumley. With his girlfriend, Nicole, Jason returns to his native Jamaica for the funeral. There the murder is regarded by all as part of the bipartisan warfare which has torn the country apart.But when Jason meets his old mentor, Papa Legba, the Rastafarian hints at a darker truth. Under the guidance of his locksman Virgil, and redeemed by his love for the Beatrice-like figure of Nicole, Jason enters the several circles of Jamaica's hell. The portrayal of the garrison ghetto area of Standpipe is, in particular, profoundly disturbing.In his infernal journeyings, Jason encounters both former acquaintances and earlier versions of himself. In the process he confronts conflicting claims on his identity: the Jason shaped by the middle-class colonial traditions of Jamaica College and the Benjamin who was once close to Papa Legba. Benjamin, My Son combines the excitement of the fast-paced thriller, the literary satisfactions of its intertextual play and the bracing commentary of its portrayal of the sexism, homophobia and moral corruption which have filled the vacuum vacated by the collapse of the nationalist dream.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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In the Xango ceremony, the contraries of New World African experience find transcendence. From the established, bodily patterns of ritual comes release into the freedom of the spirit; from the exposure of pain comes the possibilities of healing; and for the individual there is both the dread aloneness with the gods and the 'we-ness' of community.Simultaneously the rites celebrate the rich, syncretic diversity, the multiple connections of the African person in the New World and enact the tragic search for the wholeness of the lost African centre. And there is the god himself, standing at the crossroads, 'beating iron into the shape of thunder', both the prophetic voice warning of the fire to command the creator who hammers out sweet sound from the iron drum.Geoffrey Philp finds in Xango a powerful metaphor that is both particular to the Caribbean and universal in its relevance. If his first collection, Florida Bound, was characterised by the exile's bittersweet elegies of regret, and the second, Hurricane Center, stared edgily into the dark heart of a threatening world, Xango Music brings a new sinewy toughness of line to an ever deepening vision of the dynamic polarities of human existence."Using rhythm and riffs, he can pull the stops on language and give it a high energy kick. In 'jam-rock' he winds up with 'the crack of bones, the sweat of the whip; girl, you gonna get a lot of it; get it galore; my heart still beats uncha, uncha uncha, cha'(31).David and Phyllis Gershator, The Caribbean Writer. Philp successfully uses a variety of traditional forms, including the sestina - not an easy form to master but masterfully handled in 'sestina for bob.' Eclectic, the poet pays homage to Kamau Brathwaite, Bob Marley, and Derek Walcott.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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This collection is a call to arms that opens out the struggle for human survival in the epoch of the Anthropocene to remind us that this began not just in the factories of Europe but in the holds of the slave ships and plantations of the Caribbean. No natural world was more changed than the West Indian islands by sugar monoculture – and as the title poem begins: “At the end of this sentence, a flood will rise/ and swallow low-lying islands of the Caribbean”. Historically, “the debris of empire that crowd our shores” connects to the “sands of our beaches / littered with masks and plastic bottles.” Philp’s powerful and elegant poems that span past and present make it very clear that there cannot be a moral response to the climate crisis that is not also embedded in the struggle for social justice, for overcoming the malignancies of empire and colonialism and against the power of global capitalism –the missions of the West that had and have at their heart the ideology of white supremacy. These are poems of wit and anger, but also of personal intimacy – the vexed relationship with a violent father – and line after line of the shapeliest poetry – in sound, in rhythm and the exact choice of word.

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Whether set in the Jamaican past or the Miami present, whether dealing wittily with sexual errantry, inventively with manifestations of the uncanny (when Brother Belnavis tangles with a vampire), or disturbingly with teenage homophobia, Geoffrey Philp's second collection displays again the gold stamp of the born story-teller. But beyond their capacity to engage and entertain the reader, these are the multi-layered stories of a perceptive and humane observer of contemporary life. In particular, an acute empathy with troubled childhoods and adolescence offers adult readers a rewarding reconnection with the turbulence of earlier selves. There is great variety here – a lively mash-up of genres and styles. There are stories that work with quietly understated stealth – casual talk around a game of dominoes in 'Beeline Against Babylon' reveals a deep undercurrent of affection between father and son – and stories that have a ragga boldness and laugh-out-loud inventiveness, but throughout them all there runs the signature of an engaging personal voice.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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How does an alien with an unfortunate resemblance to Margaret Thatcher come to be in Uncle Obadiah's yard smoking all his best weed? This beautifully crafted and frequently hilarious collection of short stories is guaranteed to lift even the deepest gloom. Written in Jamaican patois and standard English, this is a brilliant read which will lead you through the yards of Jamaica to the streets of Miami. Here is a contemporary world, warts and all. Geoffrey Philp goes beyond stereotypes to portray the individuality and humanity in all his characters. And of course there is always the best lamb's breath colly to help improve the day."If Dickens were reincarnated as a Jamaican Rastaman, he would write stories as hilarious and humane as these. Uncle Obadiah and the other stories collected here announce Geoffrey Philp as a direct descendent of Bob Marley: poet, philosophizer, spokesperson for our next new world."Robert Antoni.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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Geoffrey Philp's poems of exasperation and longing explore a reluctance to leave Jamaica and the 'marl-white roads at Struie' and anger that 'blackman still can't live in him own/black land' where 'gunman crawl like bedbug'. But whilst poems explore the keeness and sorrows of an exile's memory, the new landscape of South Florida landscape fully engages the poet's imagination. The experience of journeying is seen as part of a larger pattern of restless but creative movement in the Americas. Philp joins other Caribbean poets in making use of nation language, but few have pushed the collision between roots language and classical forms to greater effect."Philp weaves dialect and landscape into his lines with subtle authority. It is easy to get caught up in the content and miss the grace of his technique."Carrol Fleming, The Caribbean Writer.Geoffrey Philp was born in Jamaica. He now lives and works in Miami.

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