Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Geoffrey Philp attended Mona Primary and Jamaica College, where he studied literature under the tutelage of Dennis Scott. After leaving Jamaica in 1979, he went to Miami Dade College and after graduating, he studied Caribbean, African and African-American literature with Dr. O.R. Dathorne and creative writing with Lester Goran, Evelyn Wilde Mayerson, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. As a James Michener Fellow at the University of Miami, he studied poetry with Kamau Brathwaite and fiction with George Lamming.

In 1990, he published his first book of poems, Exodus and Other Poems, and six other poetry collections have followed: Florida Bound, hurricane center, xango music, Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas, and Dub Wise. He has also published two books of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien and Who's Your Daddy. Benjamin, My Son, his first novel, was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize and since then, he has published another novel, Garvey's Ghost.

Philp's poems and short stories are widely published, appearing in Small Axe, World Literature Today, The Caribbean Writer, Gulf Stream, Florida in Poetry: A History of the Imagination, Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry, Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.