A Mural by the Sea

After living and working in Brooklyn for nearly four decades as a poet, journalist/editor and artist, Dawad Philip has since resettled in his hometown of San Fernando, Trinidad. The author of Invocations (1980), Philip's poems have appeared in several anthologies including Steppingstones, Bomb, Caribbean Voices and most recently, past simple. The poem Memories of the Chalkstone Years, first appeared in Bomb; Om, Quarter Moon and After-work at Our Place appeared in Poetry International (7/8 2003-2004); Sando Proper appeared in Voicing Our Vision Vol. 1 and New World Language New Rain, Vol, 10. A 1990 recipient of New York State Fellowship on the Arts (Poetry), Philip was one of five poets selected to represent Brooklyn in a Brooklyn-Leningrad Literary Exchange in the 1990s. He has performed his works in the Caribbean, U.S., Canada; Riga, Latvia; Moscow and St. Petersburg, and selected poems have been translated into Russian by the former Leningrad Writers Union. Philip, who holds a Masters of Arts (Carnival Arts) degree from the University of Trinidad and Tobago, keeps an active hand in the annual Trinidad Carnival and further afield as a costume designer and mask-maker.