Happy New Year, Poets of the Caribbean readers! Wishing you a fulfilling year engaging with poetry in general, and Caribbean poetry in particular.
A while back, I had a post of Haitian poets. I thought I would start of the year with a post about Haitian poet, Jean-Fernand Brierre. According to a Wikipedia entry about him, Brierre was born in 1909 in Jeremie, Haiti and died in 1992. He lived an interesting life as a poet, diplomate, journalist and dramatist. At one time, he was Haiti's ambassador to Argentina.
One interesting fact I learned from his Wikipedia entry is that he descended from a French settler, Francois Brierre and a Dahomean woman, Rosette. Rosette's sister was the grandmother of the French novelist, Alexandre Dumas. As a child, my grandmother would read to me The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas's famous work. Brierre then, is from literary pedigree.
Unfortunately, under dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Brierre experienced prison and political exile. He returned to Haiti after the fall of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duavlier.
Some of his writings include Chansons Secretes (1933), Black Soul (1947), and Sculpture de Proue (1983).
For more on Brierre, see:
https://www.lunionsuite.com/haitian-black-history-poet-jean-fernand-brierre/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/brierre-jean-fernand-1909-1992
A while back, I had a post of Haitian poets. I thought I would start of the year with a post about Haitian poet, Jean-Fernand Brierre. According to a Wikipedia entry about him, Brierre was born in 1909 in Jeremie, Haiti and died in 1992. He lived an interesting life as a poet, diplomate, journalist and dramatist. At one time, he was Haiti's ambassador to Argentina.
One interesting fact I learned from his Wikipedia entry is that he descended from a French settler, Francois Brierre and a Dahomean woman, Rosette. Rosette's sister was the grandmother of the French novelist, Alexandre Dumas. As a child, my grandmother would read to me The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas's famous work. Brierre then, is from literary pedigree.
Unfortunately, under dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Brierre experienced prison and political exile. He returned to Haiti after the fall of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duavlier.
Some of his writings include Chansons Secretes (1933), Black Soul (1947), and Sculpture de Proue (1983).
For more on Brierre, see:
https://www.lunionsuite.com/haitian-black-history-poet-jean-fernand-brierre/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/brierre-jean-fernand-1909-1992
