Ralph Thompson (poet)
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Ralph Thompson (19 April 1928 – 23 January 2022) was a
Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
n businessman, educational activist, artist and poet.


Life and business career

Ralph Thompson was born in
Poughkeepsie, New York Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...
, US, to a Jamaican mother and American father, but the marriage lasted only three years, and from 1931 Thompson and his sister were raised in
Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
. His mother's family, "a mixture of crypto Jewish (Isaacs) and Irish stock (Fielding)", was "staunchly Catholic and claimed to be white". He was educated by
Jesuits The Society of Jesus ( la, Societas Iesu; abbreviation: SJ), also known as the Jesuits (; la, Iesuitæ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
both at St. George's College in
Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...
and at
Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...
in New York, where he earned a Doctor of Law degree in 1952. After graduation, he served for two years as an officer in the
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
, principally in
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, but returned to Jamaica in 1953, married a Jamaican, Doreen Lyons, in 1954, and thereafter lived in Kingston with his wife and children, save for a brief period in the 1970s. Thompson's business career was initially in property development with Abe Issa, the "father of Jamaican tourism", then independently. After his return to Jamaica, he was deeply involved in governmental redevelopment of agriculture, and in 1988 was appointed a Commander of Distinction by the administration of
Edward Seaga Edward Philip George Seaga ( or ; 28 May 1930 – 28 May 2019) was a Jamaican politician. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Jamaica, from 1980 to 1989, and the leader of the Jamaica Labour Party from 1974 to 2005.The Gleaner ''The Gleaner'' is an English-language, morning daily newspaper founded by two brothers, Jacob and Joshua de Cordova on 13 September 1834 in Kingston, Jamaica. Originally called the ''Daily Gleaner'', the name was changed on 7 December 1992 to ' ...
'' and ''
The Jamaica Observer ''Jamaica Observer'' is a daily newspaper published in Kingston, Jamaica. The publication is owned by Butch Stewart, who chartered the paper in January 1993 as a competitor to Jamaica's oldest daily paper, ''The Gleaner''. Its founding editor is ...
''. He was also an amateur painter, and publicly exhibited several times in Kingston; a selection of his paintings was published by
Peepal Tree Press Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. It was founded after a paper shortage in Guyana halted production of new bo ...
in 2008.


Poetry

During his residence in Florida in the late 1970s, Thompson took a master's degree in English literature at the
University of South Florida The University of South Florida (USF) is a public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, and other campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. It is one of 12 members of the State University System of Florida. USF is ...
, submitted some poems as part of an assignment, and was encouraged to publish them. He began to write poetry more intensively, and in 1987
Alan Ross Alan John Ross (6 May 1922 – 14 February 2001) was a British poet, writer, editor and publisher. Early years Ross was born in Calcutta, India, son of John Brackenridge Ross, CBE, a former Lieutenant in the Indian Army Reserve ( Supply and T ...
accepted "Florida" for the ''
London Magazine ''The London Magazine'' is the title of six different publications that have appeared in succession since 1732. All six have focused on the arts, literature and miscellaneous topics. 1732–1785 ''The London Magazine, or, Gentleman's Monthly I ...
''. Thompson subsequently published more than 20 poems in British, US, and Caribbean journals, including ''
The Caribbean Writer The University of the Virgin Islands (or UVI) is a public historically black land-grant university in the United States Virgin Islands. History UVI was founded as the College of the Virgin Islands on March 16, 1962. In 1986, it officially beca ...
'' and ''
Mississippi Review The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss or USM) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to a ...
''. His work is represented in ''The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry'' (1992), ''A World of Poetry for CXC'' (1994), several ''Observer Arts Magazine'' anthologies, ''The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse'' (2005), and ''Writers Who Paint / Painters Who Write'' (2007). He published two collections of poetry and a
verse novel A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there will usually be a large cast, multiple voice ...
: *''The Denting of a Wave'' (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1992), *''Moving On'' (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1997), *''View from Mount Diablo'' (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2003; annotated 2nd edition, Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, & Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2009), (2003), (2009 paperback), (2009 digital). These volumes were all positively reviewed both in local Jamaican publications and in ''
The Caribbean Review of Books ''The Caribbean Review of Books'', or ''CRB'', is a literary magazine based in Port of Spain, Trinidad, reviewing books of Caribbean interest—by Caribbean authors or about the Caribbean—and publishing original fiction, poetry, and other literar ...
'' and ''The Caribbean Writer''. Thompson was encouraged to write ''
View from Mount Diablo ''View from Mount Diablo'' is a verse novel by Ralph Thompson (b. 1928), which won the Jamaican National Literary Award in manuscript in 2001, and was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2003. An annotated edition with a number of small textual corr ...
'' by
Derek Walcott Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
, a personal friend. It won the Jamaican National Literary Prize in manuscript in 2001, and was also warmly praised by the
Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
-winning Jamaican-American poet
Louis Simpson Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012) was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work ''At the End of the Open Road''. Life and career Simpson was born in Jamaica ...
:
''View from Mount Diablo'' is a remarkable achievement. Its knowledge of the island, the entwining of private lives and politics, lifts Jamaican poetry to a level that has not been attempted before. The poetry is strong, imaginative, fascinating in detail. It describes terrible things with understatement, yet with compassion. I don't think anything could be more harrowing than the rape of Chantal, or the boy begging Alexander to spare his life. ... This is narrative poetry at its best.
The verse novel was serialised in ''The Jamaica Observer'', and the first edition sold more than 300 copies in Jamaica (where the average sale of any new paperback is about 70 copies). In 2006, a CD of Thompson reading 28 of his poems, entitled ''Taking Words for a Walk'', was released by the Intermedia Foundation, NY. In the liner notes, the Jamaican poet
Edward Baugh Edward Alston Cecil Baugh (born 10 January 1936) is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott, whose ''Selected Poems'' (2007) Baugh edited, having in 1978 authored the first book-length study of the ...
, Professor Emeritus of Caribbean Literature at the
University of the West Indies, Mona The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the ...
, wrote:
Rippling through these poems, nuancing their meaning, is an alertness to class and color distinctions, which grounds the poems in Jamaican social reality and no doubt in the poet's own place in that reality. In "Carpenters", for instance, it matters that peasant Malcolm is "purple black," while the boy is "nearly white." In the sharply, wittily satirical "Pride and Prejudice", the central factor of color consciousness and discrimination operates across cultural boundaries. On a more ominous note are the poems which evoke the sense of social malaise and schism in contemporary Jamaica, a malaise that seems to threaten violent upheaval, poems such as "Vigil", "Death of a Honda Rider", "Jamaican Gothic", "The Garden", and "This New Light".
In October 2015, Thompson received the Silver
Musgrave Medal The Musgrave Medal is an annual award by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature.Webster, Valerie J. (2000), ''Awards, Honors & Prizes, Volume 2'', Gale Group, , p. 447. Originally conceived in 1889 a ...
for his contribution to literature. Thompson died, aged 93, on 23 January 2022.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Ralph 1928 births 2022 deaths 20th-century Jamaican poets 20th-century male writers 21st-century Jamaican poets 21st-century male writers American emigrants to Jamaica Jamaican businesspeople Jamaican male poets Recipients of the Musgrave Medal Writers from Poughkeepsie, New York