Jamaican poet and writer

Lorna Goodison CD (born 1 August 1947) is a Jamaican poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II, dividing her time between Jamaica and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, succeeding Mervyn Morris. In 2019 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Poet and literary scholar Edward Baugh says "one of Goodison’s achievements is that her poetry inscribes the Jamaican sensibility and culture on the text of the world". Apart from issues of home and exile, her work also addresses the power of art to explore and reconcile opposites and contradictions in the Caribbean historical experience. Kei Miller notes, "Primarily a poet, Goodison hasn’t been afraid of crossing the fence into other genres: she has written short stories and a much-celebrated memoir. ...I suspect she still isn't as celebrated as she really ought to be because there simply doesn’t exist the perfect critical language to talk about what she is doing, the risks she is taking, and why exactly they succeed."

Also a painter, Goodison has illustrated her own book covers, as well as exhibiting her artwork in the Caribbean, the US and Europe.

Contents

• 1 Biography
  • 1.1 Early years
  • 1.2 Writing
  • 1.3 Other creative activity
• 2 Recognition
• 3 Awards
• 4 Bibliography
  • 4.1 Poetry
  • 4.2 Short stories
  • 4.3 Memoir
  • 4.4 Essays
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Biography

Early years

Lorna Gaye Goodison was born in Kingston, Jamaica, one of nine siblings (who include the award-winning journalist Barbara Gloudon). She was educated at St. Hugh's High School, a leading Anglican high school in Jamaica, and studied at the Jamaica School of Art, before going on to the Art Students League of New York. As well as painting, she had also been writing poetry since her teenage years; some early poems appeared anonymously in the Jamaica Gleaner. Goodison has described poetry as "a dominating, intrusive tyrant. It's something I have to do – a wicked force". She has also acknowledged: "A lot of what I learned about creative writing is owed to Derek Walcott, so I learned from the best."

In her twenties, back in Jamaica, she taught art and worked in advertising and public relations before deciding to pursue a career as a professional writer. She began to publish under her own name in the Jamaica Journal, and to give readings at which she built up an appreciative audience.

In the early 1990s, Goodison began teaching part of the year at various North American universities, including the University of Toronto and the University of Michigan.

Writing

Goodison's first book to be published was the 1980 volume of poems Tamarind Season, and speaking of how it came about she has said: "I was writing these poems, and some people began to take notice. Like Neville Dawes, who was the head of the Ins*ute of Jamaica. At the time, I was working at an advertising agency where everybody was moonlighting as an artist. After I finished writing copy, I would spend time in my office writing poems." Tamarind Season was followed in 1986 by I Am Becoming My Mother, for which Goodison received the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Americas. Her subsequent poetry collections include Heartease (published in 1988, and described by Velma Pollard as "the uncovering for us of a spirit that has looked for, and found, a place"), Poems (1989), Selected Poems (1992), To Us, All Flowers Are Roses (1995), Turn Thanks (1999), Guinea Woman (2000), Travelling Mercies (2001), Controlling the Silver (2005), Goldengrove (2006), Oracabessa (2013) and Supplying Salt and Light (2013). Oracabessa won the Poetry category of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

Goodison's most recent collection of poems, Mother Muse, was published in June 2021, when Ben Wilkinson wrote in The Guardian: "Her writing is often a celebration of the spirit and tenacity of women; in various ways, Mother Muse ... extends this feature of her work." Mother Muse "orbits around two important 'mother' figures in Jamaican music: Sister Mary Ignatius, the nun who ran Kingston's Alpha Boys School, celebrated for nurturing musical talent; and Anita 'Margarita' Mahfood, a celebrated dancer and lover of ill-fated musician Don Drummond — who was an Alpha Boys alumnus. Other poems contemplate, celebrate, and elegise woman ranging from the famous to the tragic to the unknown."

Goodison has also published three collections of short stories, Baby Mother and the King of Swords (1990), Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005), and By Love Possessed (2012).

Her memoir, From Harvey River, was published in 2008, and was featured on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in May 2009, read by Doña Croll. The review by Lisa Fugard in The New York Times concluded: "Goodison's praise songs can be found in her many volumes of poetry and now in this loving memoir. It's a legacy that can be traced back to her infancy, when Goodison's mother dipped her finger in sugar and rubbed it under her daughter's tongue, ensuring her the gift of sweet speech."

Goodison's collection of essays, Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures, was published in 2018 by Myriad Editions – "a gathering of people, voices, stories, and the fruits of great labor", as characterised by SX Salon. The book featured in The Observer as one of "20 cl*ic books by writers of colour", being chosen by Margaret Busby.

Her work has appeared widely in magazines, has been translated into many languages and over the past 25 years has been included in such major anthologies as Daughters of Africa (1992), The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (2003), the HarperCollins World Reader, the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, and Longman Masters of British Literature (2006).

Other creative activity

She has exhibited her paintings internationally, and her own artwork is usually featured on the covers of her books.

Since 2017, Goodison has worked with dub poet and martial arts trainer Cherry Natural (born Marcia Wedderburn) to host a series of summer workshops pairing poetry and self-defence for girls aged from nine to 17, held at the Ins*ute of Jamaica.

Recognition

On 6 August 2013, Goodison was awarded the Jamaican national honour of the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander (CD), "for outstanding achievements in Literature and Poetry".

On 17 May 2017, Goodison was invested as the second official poet laureate of Jamaica, after Mervyn Morris, becoming the first woman to hold the *le. She marked her first Emancipation Day in the role with a poem "In Celebration of Emancipation", which commemorates the end of enslavement of African peoples in Jamaica. She has said: "I don't think it is an accident that I was born on the first of August, and I don't think it was an accident that I was given the gift of poetry, so I take that to mean that I am to write about those people and their condition, and I will carry a burden about what they endured and how they prevailed until the day I die."

In March 2018, Yale University announced Goodison as one of eight recipients (the others being Lucas Hnath, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Bakewell, Olivia Laing, John Keene. Jennifer Nansubuga Ma*bi, and Cathy Park Hong) of a Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, honouring writers for their literary achievement or promise and awarding them each a US$165,000 individual prize to support their writing.

Goodison was announced in December 2019 as recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

In 2020, Goodison was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards

• 1999: Musgrave Gold Medal by the Ins*ute of Jamaica for contributions to literature
• 2013: Jamaican Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander (CD)
• 2014: OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Oracabessa
• 2017: Poet laureate of Jamaica
• 2018: Windham–Campbell Literature Prize
• 2019: Honorary doctorate from University of Toronto
• 2019: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
• 2020: American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Bibliography

Poetry

• Tamarind Season (Ins*ute of Jamaica, 1980)
• I Am Becoming My Mother (New Beacon Books, 1986, ISBN:978-0901241689; winner of Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Americas region)
• Heartease (New Beacon Books, 1988, ISBN:978-0901241870)
• Poems (Research Ins*ute for the Study of Man/CommonWealth of Letters, 1989)
• Selected Poems (University of Michigan Press, 1992, ISBN:978-0472064939)
• To Us, All Flowers Are Roses (University of Illinois Press, 1995, ISBN:978-0252064593)
• Turn Thanks (University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN:978-9766371951)
• Guinea Woman: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2000, ISBN:978-1857544862)
• Travelling Mercies (McClelland & Stewart, 2001, ISBN:978-0771033827)
• Controlling the Silver (University of Illinois Press, 2005, ISBN:978-0252072123)
• Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2006, ISBN:978-1857548488)
• Oracabessa (Carcanet, 2013; ISBN:978-1847772428)
• Supplying Salt and Light (McClelland & Stewart, 2013; ISBN:978-0771035906)
• Collected Poems (2nd edition) (Carcanet, 2017, ISBN:9781784106386)
• Mother Muse (Carcanet, 2021, ISBN:9781800171060)

Short stories

• Baby Mother and the King of Swords (Longman, 1990, ISBN:978-0582054929)
• Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (Ian Randle Publishers, 2005, ISBN:978-9766371951)
• By Love Possessed (Amistad Press, 2012, ISBN:978-0062127358)

Memoir

• From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island (Atlantic Books, 2009, ISBN:978-1843549956)

Essays

• Redemption Ground: Essays and Adventures (Myriad Editions, 2018, ISBN:978-1-912408-13-9)

See also

• Caribbean literature
• Caribbean poetry

References

External links

• "Louise Welsh meets Jamaica's Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison", The National, 7 April 2019.
• "Lorna Goodison: Jamaican Poet Laureate", In the Studio, BBC World Service, 29 August 2017
• "Lorna Goodison", Voices from the Gaps, Regents of the University of Minnesota, 2009. Retrieved 7 August 2021.
• "Poor Mrs. Lot" from Travelling Mercies, online at CBC Words at Large
• Caribbean Review of Books index to material on Goodison.
• "Lorna Goodison" at The Poetry Archive.
• Kwame Dawes, "Lorna Goodison", Talk Yuh Talk: Interviews with Anglophone Caribbean Poets, Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia, 2001, pp.:99–107.
• Akaninyene, "SPOTLITE Exclusive: Lorna Goodison", Literandra, 15 March 2020.
• The Lorna Goodison Papers are held at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.
• Pádraig Ó Tuama, "A Conversation with Lorna Goodison", Image, Issue 104.
• "Canadian poet Lorna Goodison shares the books that inspired her life and work", CBC Books, 17 June 2020