Miami, FL – Jamaican writer, Geoffrey Philp will be reading from his most recently published collection, Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas at the Miami Book Fair International at 1pm on November 19.
Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas, scheduled to be released before the upcoming holidays, will be available in bookstores nationwide, online at Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, iUniverse and independent booksellers such as Books and Books in Miami.
Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas explores the meaning of the holy days through the lives of characters who are as near to us as our breath, and whose struggles with faith, doubt, and redemption, are as real as our own.
Emphasizing the humanity of its biblical and contemporary characters, the poems depict Mary and Joseph as a newlywed couple on a journey to their ancestral homeland where they are to be registered in a census decreed by a Roman tyrant. Mary is pregnant and Joseph knows that the child she is carrying is not his. As they travel through the harsh landscape, they are joined by strangers who have been summoned by dreams, visions, and supernatural events to bear witness to a child whose birth they are told is destined to change the course of human history.
Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas, which is set in Miami, describes the plight of Raymond Allen, a despairing musician and family man, who wrestles with his pride that is both the source of his sorrow and redemption.
“I’ve always wanted to write a quiet, meditative book,” said Philp, author of Benjamin, My Son that would give my friends (and some strangers) a taste of what I have sometimes experienced, fleetingly but nonetheless realized a moment of peace. And because I’ve always believed that a book was/is the best present I could ever give or receive, it’s my permanent Christmas gift.”
Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas explores the inner lives of characters that surround this perennial story and reveals a human dilemma: to find the meaning behind the events in our lives.
Geoffrey Philp poems and short stories have appeared in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He currently resides in Miami, Florida. For more on Geoffrey visit his web-site, www.geoffreyphilp.com.
