Daniel Thaly

Daniel Thaly (1879-1950) was a Dominican-born poet who wrote in French. He was famous in France at the turn of the 20th century where he was known as “the Prince of Antillean poetry”. His mother was from the Bellot family of Dominica but his father was from Martinique where Thaly was raised and educated. He studied medicine in Toulouse and returned to Dominica to practice as a doctor and to tend his estate there. He stopped writing when his poetry was criticised by the anti- colonial movement. The bi-lingual Looting Hummingbirds, the first translation of his work into English, reveals his passion, his nostalgia and his love of the natural environment of Dominica and Martinique.

He is the author of Looting Humminbirds.