Lorna Goodison
Lorna Goodison (August 1, 1947–) is a Caribbean poet, born in Kingston, Jamaica. A painter before she turned her focus to poetry, Goodison was educated at the Jamaica School of Art and the School of the Art Students League in New York. Her numerous poetry collections include Tamarind Season (1980), Heartease (1988), Traveling Mercies (2001), Controlling the Silver (2005), Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems (2006) and Supplying Salt and Light (2013). She is also the author of the short story collections Baby Mother and the King of Swords (1990), Fool-fool Rose is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005) and By Love Possessed (2011), as well as the memoir From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People (2007), which won the BC (British Columbia) National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and was a finalist for both the Trillium Book Award and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Her work is also featured in numerous anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (third edition, 2003), the Longman Anthology of British Literature (third edition, 2006) and the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (1996).
Goodison’s image-rich and socially- and historically-engaged poems often inhabit the lives and landscapes of her Jamaican homeland. A member of the Jamaican National Commission to UNESCO, Goodison was awarded Jamaica’s Musgrave Gold Medal in 1999. She also received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas for her second book of poetry, I am Becoming My Mother (1986). Goodison has also been awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal from Jamaica, the Henry Russel Award for Exceptional Creative Work from the University of Michigan, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Poetry, and the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People. Lorna Goodison was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica for 2017-2020.Professor of English and of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Goodison divides her time between Ann Arbor, Toronto, and the north coast of Jamaica.
Primary Text Source: Poetry Foundation
Additional Text Source: Carcanet
Archives
Lorna Goodison Papers, University of Toronto →
Digital Resources
Readings, University of Miami →
Voices from the Gaps, University of Minnesota →