“the earth vex”: a blistering warning from the archipelagos

Geoffrey Philp’s Archipelagos is a collection steeped in the blood of ancestors. It bears witness to the brutal, intertwining histories of the Caribbean but also retains a sense of hopefulness that dances off the page and keeps us enraptured. Like the sea itself, these poems can be gently cresting waves or as brutal as tsunamis, raging with the injustice of centuries of oppression.

[...]

The message at the heart of this searing collection is as clear as the notes from the archangel’s trumpet and are summarized in the collection’s parting words. Before we can use our blemished wings to fly, we must fight the ongoing destruction of our people and planet through the decolonization of the mind—for this, Philip returns to Bob Marley: “‘We must emancipate ourselves from mental slavery’” (“The Admiral, “53). Follow this book on its onward march toward liberation—still heavy with the chains of history, you will be lifted toward the sky.