Poet and playwright Kendel Hippolyte was born in St Lucia in 1952. ‘Advice to a Young Poet’ comes from his new collection Fault Lines (Peepal Tree Press, 2012), which won the poetry section of the Bocas prize for Caribbean Literature in 2013. Identified in The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry as ‘perhaps the outstanding Caribbean poet of his generation’, Hippolyte’s poetry is diverse in language, form and style, ranging from Standard English to the varieties of Caribbean English and Kweyol (the French-based Creole language of St Lucia), and from the sonnet and villanelle to free verse and forms influenced by rap and reggae.
He has published six collections of poems, which have been described as revealing him as a poet ‘who combines acute intelligence and passion, a barbed wit and lyrical tenderness’, as well as displaying a satirical and prophetic voice. ‘Advice to a Young Poet’ is reprinted here by permission of Peepal Tree Press.
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