BOOK SHELF
Wordplanting: Kendel Hippolyte
Keeps Spreading The Word
Acclaimed Saint Lucian poet/
director/playwright, Kendel
Hippolyte, is back with a full tree of
ripe words. Ever since dropping his
thought-provoking “Fault Lines” in
our hands nearly eight years ago,
he has been tilling the ground for
another major planting season.
Here’s what Peepal Tree Press and
Caribbean Beat had to say about
Hippolyte’s newest offerings.
“Kendel Hippolyte’s poetry
moves easily, boldly between the
worlds of public engagement and
the intimacies of domesticity.
What unites this movement is
the challenging, comforting,
questioning sound of his voice,
whether speaking to the generality,
to the individual recipient of an
implicit dialogue, or to himself.
“His is an art of sound, of rhythm,
of form that disguises itself as no
form, of the beauty of the crooked
basket. He wants the poem to draw
us in rather than hold us outside in
admiration at its skill and skill and
craft is what his poems display in
spades. His is a vision that extends
outwards in illimitable ways, but
where the scale is always the human
body, the human mind.
“This is Kendel Hippolyte’s seventh
collection of poetry. To the
immense strengths found in his
earlier work is added a new sense
of urgency, of time running out.
He is quite simply amongst the
very best of Caribbean poets who
warrant an international reputation.
No poet’s voice sounds more
Caribbean, yet in his poems there
are echoes of the most radical and
questioning voices in the whole of
poetry in English.” (Peepal Tree
Press)
“St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte’s
seventh collection regards tenderly
and contemplatively, as do many
poems set in a writer’s later years,
the steps that lead to the afterlife.
A well-earned wisdom facing down
death is in these verses, and yet
the poems in Wordplanting are
so generously activated by what
keeps us incandescently, immutably
alive. In “Harp”, a ruminant elder
finds himself out of step and
sync with the dancehall of the
current generation, yet soldiers
on stalwartly in paeans of song,
made to bruk down Babylon’s walls.
Even the most domestic of these
poems lilts with music, proof that
poetry about home spaces is no
less powerful in a masterful griot’s
hands. Taking us from foreign
cities to the depths of the unlit sea,
Hippolyte is calling us all into our
own power, with soaring wonder.”
(Caribbean Beat)
Wordplanting was published and
released by Peepal Tree Press (April
11, 2019). It comes in paperback and
has 64 pages. The new collection
of poems from one of Saint Lucia’s
best wordplanters is available on
Amazon.com and from 758 Saint
Lucia Books at Gablewoods Mall,
Castries, Saint Lucia.
idiomatic Caribbean language
to explore the indigenous local
culture in a political context. He
has published several collections
of verse, characterized by its
modernist free style. He is also
the editor of the anthologies
Confluence: Nine Saint Lucian Poets
(1988) and So Much Poetry in We
People (1990).
In 2000, he was awarded the Saint
Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) for
Contribution to the Arts. In 2013,
he won the poetry category of the
OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean
Literature for his 2012 poetry
collection, Fault Lines.
He is married to poet Jane King.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kendel
Hippolyte was born in Castries,
Saint Lucia, and was educated at
the University of the West Indies in
Jamaica. He worked as a teacher at
St. Mary’s College in Vigie, Castries,
and the Sir Arthur Lewis Community
College on Morne Fortune. He was
actively involved as a playwright
and director with the Lighthouse
Theatre Company, which he co-
founded.
Hippolyte has written eight plays.
His best known, Drum-maker, uses
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