Geoffrey Philp was born and grew up in Jamaica. He now lives in Miami. His 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.
Carrol Fleming writes in The Caribbean Writer: 'His poems are as vibrant and diverse as Miami where "each street crackles with dialects/variegated as the garish crotons". Miami, albeit citified, becomes just one more island with all that is good, bad and potentially violent beset by the same sea, same hurricanes, and "mangroves lashed sapless by the wind".
'Philp's poems wander through bedrooms and along the waterfronts of that perceptive land accessible only to poets, only to those who can pull the day through dawn fog to the delicate "breath of extinguished candles".
'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.'
Geoffrey Philp is a Jamaican author of poetry, short stories, novels and children's books. Philp teaches creative writing at Miami Dade College and has a Master of Arts in English from the University of Miami. Peepal Tree has published eight of his books (with a ninth forthcoming). A huge supporter of Caribbean books and writers, he posts interviews, fiction, poetry, podcasts, and literary events from the Caribbean and South Florida on his blog. In 2022, he was awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal for outstanding merit in literature.
