Birthright (Paperback)

Kendel Hippolyte

ISBN 10: 0948833939 / ISBN 13: 9780948833939

Verlag: Peepal Tree Press Ltd, Yorkshire, 1997

Beschreibung

Paperback. The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry described Kendel Hippolyte as 'perhaps the outstanding Caribbean poet of his generation'. Until now his poetry has only been available in anthologies and slim collections which have been little seen outside St. Lucia. Birthright reveals him as a poet who combines acute intelligence and passion, a barbed wit and lyrical tenderness.He writes with satirical anger from the perspective of an island marginalised by the international money markets in a prophetic voice whose ancestry is Blake, Whitman and Lawrence, married to the contemporary influences of reggae, rastafarian word-play and a dread cosmology. He writes, too, with an acute control of formal structures, of sound, rhythm and rhyme - there are sonnets and even a villanelle - but like 'Bunny Wailer flailing Apollyon with a single song', his poetry has 'a deepdown spiritual chanting rising upfull-I'. Whilst acknowledging a debt of influence and admiration to his fellow St. Lucian, Derek Walcott, Kendel Hippolyte's poetry has a direct force which is in the best sense a corrective to Walcott's tendency to romanticise the St. Lucian landscape and people."It is clear that Hippolyte's social consciousness is subordinated to his fascination with words, with the poetics of language, and so in the end we are left with a sense of having taken a journey with a poet who loves the musicality of his words. His more overtly craft conscious neo-formalist pieces are deft, efficient and never strained. Villanelles, sonnets and interesting rhyming verse show his discipline and the quiet concentration of a poet who does not write for the rat race of the publishing world, but for himself. One gets the sense of a writer working in a laboratory patiently, waiting for the right image to come, and then placing it there only when it comes. This calm, this devotion is enviable for frenetic writers like myself who act as if there is a death wish on our heads or a promise of early passing. Our poetry, one suspects, suffers. Hippolyte shows no such anxiety and the result is verse of remarkable grace and beauty."Kwame Dawes.Kendel Hippolyte was born in St.Lucia in 1952, he studied and lived in Jamaica in the 1970s, where he explored his talents as a poet, playwright and director. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9780948833939

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Birthright (Paperback)
• Verlag: Peepal Tree Press Ltd, Yorkshire
• Erscheinungsjahr: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0948833939
• ISBN-13: 9780948833939
• Einband: Paperback
• Zustand: new

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry described Kendel Hippolyte as 'perhaps the outstanding Caribbean poet of his generation'. Until now his poetry has only been available in anthologies and slim collections which have been little seen outside St. Lucia. Birthright reveals him as a poet who combines acute intelligence and passion, a barbed wit and lyrical tenderness.

He writes with satirical anger from the perspective of an island marginalised by the international money markets in a prophetic voice whose ancestry is Blake, Whitman and Lawrence, married to the contemporary influences of reggae, rastafarian word-play and a dread cosmology. He writes, too, with an acute control of formal structures, of sound, rhythm and rhyme - there are sonnets and even a villanelle - but like 'Bunny Wailer flailing Apollyon with a single song', his poetry has 'a deepdown spiritual chanting rising upfull-I'. Whilst acknowledging a debt of influence and admiration to his fellow St. Lucian, Derek Walcott, Kendel Hippolyte's poetry has a direct force which is in the best sense a corrective to Walcott's tendency to romanticise the St. Lucian landscape and people.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

After Derek Walcott, Kendel Hippolyte is undoubtedly the finest poet St. Lucia has produced. Featured in every major anthology of Caribbean poetry, his work is here made available to a wider audience for the first time. Kendel Hippolyte was born in St. Lucia in 1952 and has lived there all his life. He is a dramatist and co-founder of the Lighthouse Theatre Company, one of the Caribbean's most important theatre groups. Three of his collections of poetry were published in St. Lucia, and his work has been anthologised in The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse, West Indian Poetry, Voiceprint, Crossing Water, Caribbean Poetry Now and the Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry.