Kendel Hippolyte speaks through and beyond tradition. He writes in sonnets and villanelles, in idiomatic dramatic monologues that capture the rhythms of Caribbean speech, in blues and rap poems, in free verse that draws upon the long-breath incantatory lines of Ginsberg and contracts in miniaturist forms as concise as graffiti. 

In the title poem of this collection Kendel Hippolyte lays down an ambitious challenge to himself and his reader:

"Because we see with history,
it is difficult to see through it. And yet we must
or we become it, become nothing else but history."

In rising to meet his challenge, Hippolyte draws upon all his verbal mastery and critical insight to draw sharp focus upon a nation in flux, where urbanisation expands and fragments his home of St. Lucia. The poet turns his vision upon the people, the land and the culture, and finds a microcosm of the Caribbean in the 21st Century.