Interview by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Before Geoffrey Philp grabs his pen, his stories, poems and plays are already alive. When Philp is faced with a blank page, he says “…[at first] it’s all voices…there’s no author involved.” Philp, the lassoer of these voices, is a prominent, prolific and affable writer.
Philp was born in Kingston, Jamaica and left Jamaica for Miami in 1979. In Miami, he studied Caribbean, African and African-American literature and creative writing with Lester Goran, Evelyn Wilde Mayerson, Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite and other highly regarded poets and writers. Philp released five books of poems, including Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, Hurricane Center, Xango Music, and Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas. He has also written a short story collection, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien, a novel, Benjamin, My Son, which was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize, and two children's books. His work has been anthologized in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, among other collections.
Philp’s work is heavily influenced by Jamaica and South Florida. He is particularly interested in the Caribbean male identity, reggae music, and Caribbean tradition and culture. Throughout all of Philp’s writing, there is an undefinable magic that lifts his poetry, stories, and plays beyond just good writing. Philp’s work becomes a spiritual experience. His voices are serving him well.
Philp and I met in Hollywood, Florida, where we discussed Philp’s writing journey, Marcus Garvey, masculinity and the future of black and Caribbean literature.
ORIGINS
You’re incredibly prolific. You write memoirs, novels, poetry, plays and short fiction. Why are you drawn to writing so many different genres?
PHILP
Because an idea will come and I have to find the best way to express it. Sometimes it’s all just voices. There’s no author involved. So I know my story will be a play. The tricky part is whether it’s a short story, novel or poem. Usually, then, a line will come. And I start writing it. And I wait for the next line and then it happens, and another happens, and sometimes I go, “Oh! This is a poem.” Okay, that works. Sometimes someone interrupts, and I go “Okay…there’s somebody else in the room.” So I let the character in. And then the characters start to have an argument. If there’s no authorial voice coming in, I go “Okay which point of view am I going to take? Is it this one or this one? Do I want to repeat myself?” I hate repeating myself. I like first person a lot. Which is why I like [Michele Jessica Fievre’s] play because there’s such a balance involved. The first person allows that sort of intimacy with those voices.
ORIGINS
I love the idea that all of these voices are speaking to you. So you hone in on a line or voice and find the best medium to express that idea?
PHILP
Yes. The poem we recorded [for Reading Queer], that was the first poem I wrote here. I was at Young Circle in Hollywood [Florida] waiting for the bus to come. I was just coming off the banana boat. I was dying to hear another Caribbean accent. The line that came to me was: I hear the lisp of the sea curled on the tongues of passersby. That was how my writing [in Florida] started. I was teaching at the time and I was giving the kids an assignment. I said use your senses, you know, all that, and I decided to just finish off my poem. You can’t give an assignment and not to do it yourself or not have done it yourself. So I gave them the assignment and I wrote the poem.
ORIGINS
In your celebrated novel Brother, My Son, you reimagine Dante’s Inferno in Jamaica. Why were you interested in Dante’s Inferno? What were the challenges of taking a story that was already known and adapting it into a novel?
PHILP
I was always interested in Dante’s Inferno and I studied it in graduate school. Dante was an exile like me. The whole topography of hell also appealed to me. I began to see Dante in present day Jamaica. Growing up Rastafarian, who view Jamaica as literal hell, I could write about trench towns. So I plotted out the circularity of my character starting here and going deeper and deeper. He goes deeper until he finally gets to the bottom where he has his betrayals. That was me drawing up a map and finding out where things went. The other part of the novel was creating the Beatrice image. Here, the character wasn’t so much as [the protagonist’s] “booty” but the recovery of his feminine self. A lot of people say to me, "Why did you start out with that horrible bad word bombo?" Which is a horrible Jamaican curse word.
ORIGINS
What does bombo mean, if I’m allowed to ask?
PHILP
Bombo. The bomboclatt is the menstrual cloth. [The protagonist] was so offended by these things. He went to an all boy’s school and he is very much misogynistic when the novel starts. And he goes through all of these visions of women until he finally has an encounter [with Beatrice] and he recovers her. He finally sees her. And not through these various lenses. He’s not worthy of her in the beginning of the novel. Which is why the book starts out with that terrible word. I was also thinking what does a Jamaican demon sound like? I think the first word out of a Jamaican demon would be bombo.
ORIGINS
Definitely.
In your work you’re also attracted to writing about father-son relationships and the Caribbean male identity. Why are you interested in these relationships?
PHILP
I don’t know. I know part of it has to do with my father. He left us when I was eleven, which is a crucial point in a child’s life. I met up with my family years later. I started finding out about my father and all of these years I felt part of my family had him, and I didn’t. They were like, “Listen, [your father] would only listen to the BBC news. BBC at eight, at six. Forget Bob Marley.” And I was like, Thank God I didn’t grow up with him.
ORIGINS
No Bob Marley? Oh no.
PHILP
I know. Yes, with time and age I think it was best it worked out that way. I also read this book called My Mother Who Fathered Me. The book asks how do you establish yourself as a Caribbean man when there isn’t a father around? Of course you’ll have baggage left over. It asks what is Caribbean masculinity? Which is why I wrote that set of short stories Who’s Your Daddy which is looking at that question from 18 different ways. Which is also why I wrote that story How Do You Tell, too. Because if you’re a gay Caribbean man, will our culture consider you a man?
ORIGINS
Masculinity is a little more complicated in Caribbean and black literature, it seems.
PHILP
Yes. Even in that story I wrote for 15 Views of Miami, [the protagonist] says I’m a pitcher not a catcher. I may be gay, but I’m a pitcher not a catcher.
ORIGINS
I think about that a lot. That over generations, men from the African Diaspora have been taught to adopt a sort of hyper-masculinity, because of this history of abuse and emasculation. You explore the Caribbean male identity in your work too. I don’t know if hyper-masculinity is in the consciousness of the black or Caribbean male writer?
PHILP
For me, I’m dealing with the voices. After I’ve been poking around in the story I go…oh this is how they are or how I am. In my story in 15 Views of Miami, the protagonist is a go-getter, a Type A personality. So he’d always want to be dominant in every way. I also think every man on every island thinks he’s the biggest baddest cocksman that ever lived.
ORIGINS
That’s awesome. Definitely in your work, where male characters don’t have fathers, the boy has to learn to be a man without a father.
PHILP
Yes. A mother can’t always teach you to be a man. When you have another man who threatens you and you shoot him a look, a mother can’t teach you how to shoot that look. There are visual cues. When your father meets a man for the first time and he has to shoot him a look, he’ll do something different. Those are the cues you pick up as a little boy. As you get older, your views change when you meet and talk to women. As a man, you realize, oh women have desires too. They’re not these virginal creatures that appear out of nowhere. They’re people, they’re somebody. All of these ideas come into play with the creation of a character. And then there’s the artifice of the work itself. What the character needs and how need drives the plot. If the character gets what he wants, or if he doesn’t. That’s your story.
ORIGINS
Origins focuses on the identity and journey of the writer. Would you talk a bit about why you pursued creative writing as a profession?
PHILP
I started writing when I was in high school. I’d fallen in love with the girl next door. She wore white all the time and she was virginal. Of all things, her name was Penelope. I was doomed from the start! I was an English major so I was writing bad poems to impress her. I had a teacher—his name was Dennis Scott. In 1972, he’d won the Commonwealth Prize for poetry. I wrote a poetry book for her and I tried to write like Dennis Scott but I couldn’t because he was a genius. So I wrote my own things and they were published in the Daily Gleaner in Jamaica. I had to wait another three years until I got published again at the University of the West Indies. Then I left Jamaica. When I came to America, I put “writer” on my passport because everything else wasn’t available to me. I thought, From here on out I’m going to write.
ORIGINS
And you received your MFA from the University of Miami?
PHILP
Yes, when it was a fledgling program. I started out at Miami Dade College. I won a couple of poetry prizes there, then I got a full scholarship to the University of Miami.
ORIGINS
You had that drive.
PHILP
It wasn’t really a drive. I was just poetry, poetry, poetry for a long time. Then I was tossing around the idea of Benjamin, My Son and thought I'd need a thesis at the University of Miami in a hurry. So that’s how I wrote Benjamin, My Son. I had to be finished in less than nine months at UM. The program forced me to finish that novel and get the MFA.
ORIGINS
Since you write in so many genres and you’re very successful in all of them, do you find one easier to write? Do you gravitate toward one more than the other?
PHILP
Out of sheer vanity, I’d like to think of myself as a poet first. That’s my preferred medium. I like short stories. Novels are just bloody hard. I’m not knocking marriage, but novels are like marriage. You don’t know how a novel is going to end up. Here’s why…in the middle of a novel a character might just walk out. And that’s it! You’ve dedicated six months and guess what? She wants nothing more to do with you. And you’re there still thinking about her. My newest novel coming out in August 2015—it’s called Garvey’s Ghost—that novel is almost 20 years in the making. I tried to write it one way but it didn’t work. Then another way and it didn’t work. The first ten years was me forcing the novel to become something it wasn’t. From about 1995 to 2010, I was thinking about it and working on it and it was just there. I was shopping it around in Jamaica and they said, “Yeah we’ll do it!” So it’s coming out in August.
ORIGINS
So much of your work is heavily influenced by the historical figure Marcus Garvey. Would you talk a bit about his influence on your writing?
PHILP
Every time I think I’ve learned something new I go “Oh, Marcus has been here.” It’s a strange analogy, but he’s like the big cocksman of the area. Like every girl is saying, "Oh I used to be with Marcus!" Really, he just did everything. I’m getting back into semiotic theory and Marcus Garvey gave us a flag. All of these signs and symbols of blackness originated with Marcus Garvey. I’m preparing to teach a class on semiotic theory and I’m realizing Marcus Garvey did this a hundred years ago. Even what we’re talking about now in Baltimore, what’s going on there. They’re saying, Yes, we should have black-owned businesses. Marcus Garvey laid out the blueprint over one hundred years ago and said, “Look if you follow this, you’ll be okay.” But, people don’t listen and so they suffer.
ORIGINS
How does Garvey play into your new book, Garvey's Ghost?
PHILP
It’s partly inspired by what’s happening with my life and how Marcus Garvey has influenced it. I’m also meeting with all sorts of black groups and organizations. I tell you some of those brothers out there are scary.
Most of the action in the novel takes place here, in South Florida. Benjamin, My Son was about reclaiming the feminine. This new book is an extension of that. It’s about a young girl named Jasmine who runs away from her mother’s house. She’s living on South Beach. She goes to join an ultra-militant Garvey group. The first night they keep Jasmine up 36 hours with no water. By the time she comes out she’s like, “Anything you say I’ll do.” Then her mother tries to find out where she is. While the mother is trying to find her, she meets a professor who really starts Jasmine on this path of discovering Garvey.
ORIGINS
Cults are probably complicated for the black identity too. As a black man or woman, you go through the United States feeling like you’re lower than everybody else. Then you have this group that says you’re a king or queen, you’re somebody, and it’s probably easy to get sucked in if you’re not too sure about who you are.
PHILP
Yes. That’s what draws Jasmine in. The father is white and he seduced the mother, and his mother was an ex-Jehovah’s witness. She is looking for herself. The Rasta professor talks to her about it. Does she go to the patio or does she go to McDonald’s? You also find out some black people can really be into conspiracy theories. I’m like, I know we’re living in Babylon, but come on. Everything is a conspiracy theory? It’s like Kalamu ya Salaam says, “Okay, this is a conspiracy, but how is that going to free us?”
ORIGINS
Absolutely. Jasmine is a woman, too, and women are often stereotyped as being easily influenced by things.
PHILP
In the novel, there’s a dream sequence with Jasmine’s mother, who has disowned her daughter. When the mother had the child she was banished from the church. There’s a dream sequence where Jasmine’s mother is back on the beach and she’s sitting waiting for the bus to come. And this old man says “Black girl, I know you want it.” And then she can feel the yellow nails tearing off her bra and everything else. That scene explores that stereotype that black women are easy.
ORIGINS
I’m always thinking about these issues. These conflicts in African American and Caribbean communities. You have the male that needs to prove he’s hyper-masculine because his manhood has been stripped away. And the woman who feels she needs to prove she is sexually responsible, good-hearted and successful. To buck all of those terrible stereotypes is no easy feat...that’s why I like your work, you explore all of these issues within these communities.
PHILP
Yes, there are all of these conflicts. All of this needing to prove yourself.
ORIGINS
You’ve also talked about Bob Marley before, on your blog and in your writing. Why is Bob Marley one of your influences?
PHILP
When I was in Jamaica, he was in the water. There are so many songs written about truth and love. Honestly, you can’t be Jamaican and not worry about justice. I was growing up in an environment where truth, rights and justice are important, which is also very biblical. Marley is talking about justice and equality and all of these things. He was the most popular figure of truth, rights and justice in Jamaica. And on top of that, he’s a great writer. You take a simple verse, where he combines three ideas into one. In “Is This Love?” he says “We'll be together, with a roof right over our heads/We'll share the shelter of my single bed/We'll share the same room/Jah provide the bread.” You have the spiritual, physical and political all in those lines. I aspire to something like that. Marley has such lyrical intensity, you can’t help but admire his writing. His work feeds into my concerns about justice in the Caribbean and reconciliation. Marley is a father, too. He’s involved with my whole exploration of the Caribbean male. As a Jamaican male, you must be firm. When Marley put out the song “Is This Love?” they all said “Bob gone soft.” When he put out the Kaya LP with all the love songs, they all said he went soft. Bob lost his sexual vigor. Again, you don’t want to lose your street cred in Jamaica. You’re supposed to be a revolutionary. In Jamaica, if you say you’re a writer, they say, “Oh, you’re soft.”
ORIGINS
That’s funny. I bet when you get published and receive lots of critical acclaim, they love you and claim you fast.
PHILP
No, you’re even softer then. You’re suspect now. They might like you, but you’re suspect.
ORIGINS
Wow.
PHILP
That’s the way it is.
Erzulie's Daughter
by Geoffrey Philp
(from the upcoming collection The Orishas of Ives Dairy)
It began with the usual insults
about her nose and hips,
and the belief that her true-true mother
lived on a coral island protected
by sunken galleys and man-o-wars.
These fantasies,
her therapists said, were drawing her
toward a different future
than her parents had wished for
when they punished her
for not reading the books they’d studied,
and sent her away on Easter egg hunts
dressed in starched, pink dresses, white bonnets,
and blue bows in each braid of her stubborn hair.
And when she began cutting her wrists,
arms, legs, and belly, her parents
agreed with the psychiatrists
to the prescriptions of pills, potions,
and poisons to keep her grounded in this life.
But then, the scabs became scars became scales,
her hair grew wild and untamed,
and a garden of yellows, blues, and reds sprouted
on her arms, legs, and back –
her ears and lips studded with gold –
and almost overnight she changed into something
she had always resembled in her own dreams,
in the mirror of her mother –
something beautiful and fearsome.
ORIGINS
Your work is also influenced by the African Yoruba gods. Would you talk a bit about why you’re so drawn to them?
PHILP
I have a new collection I’m presently sending out. It’s called The Orishas of Ives Dairy. It’s basically what happens when Oshun moves into my neighborhood and all of the trouble she causes. It’s a book of poetry but there’s a clear narrative. It begins as all Yoruba books should, with a tribute to Elegua. And then in the next poem, there’s Oshun’s arrival. Oshun being Oshun, she doesn’t have just one man. She gets involved with a General, who is Jamaican. There’s an older woman named Dorothy who speaks as Yemaya. You have the various Yoruba gods incarnated. All of them offer their own commentary. Or not. They’re all saying “Here’s my life.” You get glimpses of the narrator, the writer, who is named Drew. Drew is totally in love with Marian, the projection of Oshun. The General is Ogun and he’s absolutely murderous.
ORIGINS
You’re handling all of these stories in the poetic form.
PHILP
I’m just fascinated by the gods. Especially with Oshun. I’ve fallen in love with Oshun.
ORIGINS
I love Oshun. I’ve always been a big fan of Yemaya too.
PHILP
Yemaya is staid. Oshun really doesn’t care. She cares, but it’s like today, or right now. Then she’s off somewhere else. Yemaya will always be there. Which is why Mrs. Dorothy is a little old black lady. 4’9. And she counsels Drew.
ORIGINS
You’ve said you are drawn to works from the Caribbean and Jamaican Diaspora. How do you feel about the current state of Caribbean literature? What is the United States doing right, and what are we doing wrong with respect to the representation of Afro-Caribbean or Caribbean writers?
PHILP
The industry is great. It’s flourishing. Some of these young writers coming up, Marlon James. Tanya Shirley...as an older writer, I can see how they’ve thrown off a lot of these generational restraints and they’re just doing whatever the hell they want. Part of the problem with me trying to be a writer and learning from another writer is that there were certain generational restraints. Now these new writers are like "We don’t represent anything. We just write." The publishing world has opened up. It’s easier for Caribbean work to be recognized and published. That kind of daring is wonderful. To a certain extent, I was constrained by the thought [no one would read my work]. Imagine the 1980s and 90s, the literary landscape. When I was writing, I wondered: Would anybody read this? Maybe one person, that’s it. You had to gauge your audience then. But these younger writers are an inspiration to me. Now I think, “I’m free! I can do whatever I want.”
ORIGINS
That’s great. So you’re saying it’s easier now for Caribbean writers to find a home for their work. All of this stuff that used to be niche is now mainstream.
PHILP
Yes. Especially Marlon James. You call me a novelist, but I’m really not. I’m a storyteller. A storyteller goes from A to B. The novelist—like with Marlon’s first novel—the novelist says, "I’m going to tell it from back to front. How do you like them apples?" With Marlon’s second story, he goes, "I’m going to tell it from the woman’s perspective and invent a dialect. How do you like them apples?" That’s what a novelist does.
ORIGINS
And you think the literary world is relaxing? Or they’re giving more opportunities to Caribbean writers?
PHILP
This all happens every twenty years. Like when Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize. Then it died down. Then with Junot it came back. People were like, “You guys are still here?” So with Marlon James, we’re at a time with the publishing world where people are going, “Oh, I remember black writers.”
ORIGINS
Do you think that multicultural writing is a trend then? Is that a problem? If our stories are becoming “a trend” the industry will just get sick of us after we wear out our welcome?
PHILP
It depends on who you’re writing for and why you’re writing. I’ve always written for a Jamaican audience. And that’s why Marlon is great too. He’s writing for himself.
ORIGINS
Often, writers of certain races or sexual orientations are labeled easily. They’re called black or LGBT or Asian or whatever kinds of writers. Do you feel comfortable being called a Jamaican, black or Caribbean writer?
PHILP
I really don’t know. I’m sending off a short story that’s going to be part of a collection. It’s called “Dawn of the Dread.” It’s about these guys who start smoking weed and become zombies. I put “born in Jamaica” on my biography, because it’s part of my identity. I’ve also lived in Miami for so long, which is why my collection of poems is called The Orishas of Ives Dairy. So I don’t know how I feel about that.
ORIGINS
Yeah. I know some writers have a real problem with being called a “Caribbean” or “black” writer.
PHILP
Yes, they do. But who cares. I don’t care. I also don’t walk around saying to people, “Hi. I’m black Geoffrey.” I’m Geoffrey.
ORIGINS
That’s an awesome answer. Are you working on anything new right now?
PHILP
This year, I have a collection of poems I’m shopping around, a novel, and an anthology coming out.
ORIGINS
That’s a lot in one year!
PHILP
Yes, it’s the year of Oshun. A good year.
END
Geoffrey Philp, an author from Jamaica, has written two children's books, Marcus and the Amazons, and Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories; two collections of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien andWho's Your Daddy?; a novel, Benjamin, my son, and five poetry collections, Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, Hurricane Center, Xango Music and Dub Wise. A graduate of the University of Miami, where he earned a Master of Arts in English, Philp teaches creative writing at Miami Dade College. He posts interviews, fiction, poetry, podcasts, and literary events from the Caribbean and South Florida on his blog: geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com.