Fault Lines
SynopsisPlot
Presenting what life is like on a small island, vulnerable to the wounded thrashings of world capitalism in crisis—an island where livelihoods are destroyed at the flourish of a Brussel bureaucrat’s pen; where Paradise is a tourist cruise ship that reminds the people of their neocolonial status; and where global consumerism has poisoned the ambitions of the young into drugs, crime, and violence—these candid poems are a warning of the perils fragmenting societies and ecologies.
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About this book
Fault Lines is a poetry collection by Kendel Hippolyte, a Saint Lucian poet whose work addresses life on a small Caribbean island shaped by outside economic forces. The poems describe a place where decisions made in distant capitals can upend local livelihoods overnight, and where the arrival of tourist cruise ships serves as a persistent reminder of neocolonial power structures. Hippolyte writes with directness about these pressures, grounding broad global patterns in the specific landscape and daily reality of island life.
The collection also turns toward the effects of global consumer culture on younger generations, tracking how imported aspirations feed into cycles of drugs, crime, and violence. Hippolyte treats these subjects not as isolated social problems but as connected consequences of economic vulnerability and ecological fragility. The title itself suggests fractures running beneath the surface, lines of stress in both the physical land and the social fabric of small island communities.
Hippolyte is recognized as one of the Caribbean's significant poets. His writing in this collection stays close to concrete details, using the particular geography and economy of Saint Lucia to examine forces that extend well beyond its coastline.
