Guy Tirolien (; February 13, 1917 – March 8, 1988) was a Guadeloupean poet. He was born in Point-à-Pitre and died at the age of 71 in

Marie-Galante Marie-Galante ( gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Mawigalant) is one of the islands that form Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France. Marie-Galante has a land area of . It had 11,528 inhabitants at the start of 2013, but by the start of 2018 ...

Biography

Guy Tirolien was born in Point-à-Pitre,

Guadelope Guadeloupe (; ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Gwadloup, ) is an archipelago and overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the ...

to Furcie Tirolen and Léontine Alméda Colonneau. He was a part of the

Négritude ''Négritude'' (from French "Nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African ...

ideological movement. He was also a

colonial Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 au ...

administrator in

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

and Mali, where he met several figures of the Harlem Renaissance. However, he was taken prisoner during World War II. Afterwards, he worked as an international civil servant, representing the UN, notably in Mali and Gabon. He is the grandfather of singer-songwriter Malika Tirolien.

Work

Tirolen is known as the author of "''Prière d'un petit enfant nègre''" (1943), a poem included in his book "Balles d'or" published by Présence Africaine. The poem is about a black child who does not want to go to the white school. He also wrote "Feuilles vivantes au matin" under the same publisher.

Selected works

* ''Balles d'or'', published by Présence Africaine in 1961 and 1995 * ''Feuilles vivantes au matin'', published by Présence Africaine in 1977 * ''De Marie-Galante à une poétique afro-antillaise'', published by L'Harmattan, collected by Monde Caraïbe 1917 births 1988 deaths Guadeloupean poets 20th-century French poets French male poets 20th-century French male writers {{Guadeloupe-bio-stub