Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell (born 1950 in Haiti) is a

Haitian-American Haitian Americans (french: Haïtiens-Américains; ht, ayisyen ameriken) are a group of Americans of full or partial Haitian origin or descent. The largest proportion of Haitians in the United States live in Little Haiti to the South Florida area ...

poet, painter, and short story writer.

Life

Marilène Phipps-Kettlewell was born and raised in

Haiti Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and ...

, until the age of 10. She also lived in France. She studied anthropology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and graduated from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

with an M.F.A.. She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,

Bunting Institute The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

W. E. B. Du Bois Institute The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute, formerly the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, is part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research located at Harvard University. Its main work is ...

and the

Center for the Study of World Religions Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...

, all at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, as well as from the

New England Foundation for the Arts The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of six not-for-profit regional arts organizations funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and by private foundations, corporations and ind ...

. Her work has appeared in the literary journals ''

Callaloo Callaloo (many spelling variants, such as kallaloo, calaloo, calalloo, calaloux or callalloo; ) is a popular Caribbean vegetable dish. There are many variants across the Caribbean, depending on the availability of local vegetables. The main in ...

'', ''Tanbou'', and ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Boston. ...

''. She has donated paintings to the

National Center of Afro-American Artists The National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) is a center in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts founded in 1968 by Elma Lewis to "preserv and foster the cultural arts heritage of black peoples worldwide through arts teaching, and the presentat ...

Awards

* 2000: Crab Orchard Review Poetry Prize * 1999–2000: Senior Fellowship, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School * 1993: Grolier Poetry Prize * 1995:

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in painting *

* Harvard University

for Afro-American Research

Works

* *

Anthologies

* * * *

Reviews

Just a handful of poems actually address the earthquake itself—perfectly understandable, given its recentness at the time of the Harvard reading. Among them, 'Intersection' by
Danielle Legros Georges Danielle Legros Georges is a Haitian-born American poet, essayist and academic. She is a professor of creative writing in the Lesley University MFA Program in Creative Writing.Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( , ; ht, Pòtoprens ) is the capital and most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 987,311 in 2015 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The metropolitan area is define ...
.

Life in Haiti, before the recent earthquake but no less steeped in hardship and spiritual overcoming, is captured in interconnected stories by a gifted Haitian American. ... In sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes sharply ironic fashion, Phipps-Kettlewell writes of coping in a place where the lush surroundings are a constant reminder of how removed from paradise people are. ... But as sad as the stories can get, the author's empathy for her resilient subjects, and her grasp of the human comedy in depicting the creative ways downtrodden people keep hope alive, makes the book unexpectedly entertaining. Brilliantly evocative contemporary stories about Haiti ...

In contrast, one can, and does, find pleasure in Marilene Phipps's first full-length collection of poems, ''Crossroads and Unholy Water''. Not the light, transient pleasure of a novel only suitable for the beach, but pleasure of the soul-satisfying kind. The book invites deeper reading, rather than demanding it. ... Phipps book has the tried and true stuff of fine poetry—remarkable images, striking metaphors, big themes—without being stuffy. It covers the full range of the human drama—its glory, its misery, its humor and its pathos.

... Marilene Phipps focuses on voodoo themes but she paints incongruously in heavy dabs of oily impasto. An example is the somewhat-photographic composition of a man in white clothes paying his respects to the corpse under a sheet before a shelf loaded with statuettes and vases of flowers. The drawing is sound and the colors juicy but the general effect is perilously close to calendar art.

References

External links

Author's website

''Web del Sol''. * Kathleen M. Balutansky and Marilene Phipps
"Houses of the People and Houses of the Self: An Interview with Marilene Phipps"
''Callaloo'', Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 418–430.
Marilene's Official Facebook Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phipps, Marilene 1950 births 21st-century American women writers American women poets American writers of Haitian descent Haitian emigrants to the United States Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Poets from Boston