Equilibrium is articulated in this new collection: it is sun and horizon, the bridge between light and darkness, Jouvay and Las Lap, the book ends of the Carnival; and in the middle, the ordinariness of life and personal journey as the axis turns. "City Twilight" is an unknown steelband taking us through the unmasking of life in the bundles of the day's news dropped off at the news stand, fresh bread; a street sweeper after the commerce of the day, an evening landscape, language and experience."Dawad Philip is a national ...
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Equilibrium is articulated in this new collection: it is sun and horizon, the bridge between light and darkness, Jouvay and Las Lap, the book ends of the Carnival; and in the middle, the ordinariness of life and personal journey as the axis turns. "City Twilight" is an unknown steelband taking us through the unmasking of life in the bundles of the day's news dropped off at the news stand, fresh bread; a street sweeper after the commerce of the day, an evening landscape, language and experience."Dawad Philip is a national treasure who uses his many talents and creative skills as a writer, designer, artist, poet and entrepreneur to capture and distil in whichever medium or combination of outlets he chooses, the uniqueness of our still evolving national culture. His poetry captures the wealth and depth, the beauty and occasional bafflement, upside and downside of life and living in the enigma that is Trinidad. He is our Renaissance man holding a lamp and mirror before us, showing us who we are and what we can and should become. He is a friend, faithful and just, to his muse, his conscience and his multiple talents. "City Twilight" is not an echo so much as a variation of T.S. Eliot's theme from "The Four Quartets", We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time."-Tony DeyalDawad Philip: Author of Invocations (1980), A Mural by the Sea (2017) and Jayden and the King of the Brooklyn Carnival (with Yolanda Lezama-Clark, 2019). Dawad Philip's poems have appeared in Steppingstones, Bomb, Caribbean Voices, Poetry International, past simple, Voicing Our Vision and New Rain. The poem, "Licks" is a slightly revised version of the original (Invocations 1980). A 1990 recipient of New York State Fellowship on the Arts (Poetry), he has performed his works in the Caribbean, U.S., Canada, Latvia and Russia. Philip, who holds a Masters of Arts (Carnival Arts) degree from the University of Trinidad and Tobago, keeps active in the Carnival as a costume designer and mask maker. After living and working in Brooklyn for nearly four decades as a poet, journalist/editor and artist, Philip has since resettled in his hometown of San Fernando, Trinidad. "A Mural by the Sea" (2018), a film by the late playwright/filmmaker Tony Hall, is based on selected poems from the book of the same title.
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