Ralph Thompson (poet)

Ralph Thompson (born 1928), is a Jamaican businessman, educational activist, artist and poet.

Thompson was born in Poughkeepsie, NY, to a Jamaican mother and US father, but the marriage lasted only three years, and from 1931 he and his sister were raised in Jamaica. 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 both at St George's College in Kingston and at Fordham University 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, principally in Japan, but returned to Jamaica in 1953, married a Jamaican, Doreen Lyons, in 1954, and has since 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. His last major post was as CEO of Seprod Ltd, a large Jamaican manufacturing firm supplying household products and consumer goods for the local market.

Thompson is also a noted educational activist, speaking on radio and TV, and frequently writing for The Gleaner and The Observer. He is also an amateur painter, and has publicly exhibited several times in Kingston; a selection of his paintings was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2008.

During his residence in Florida in the late 1970s Thompson took a Masters in English Literature at the University of South Florida, 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 accepted "Florida" for the London Magazine. Thompson has subsequently published more than 20 poems in British, US, and Caribbean journals, including The Caribbean Writer and Mississippi Review. 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).

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