Lorna Goodison

Lorna Gaye Goodison (born 1 August 1947) is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now professor emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017 (succeeding Mervyn Morris), serving in the role until 2020.

Goodison's 1986 book of poems, I Am Becoming My Mother, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and her 2013 volume, Oracabessa, won the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry. In addition to poetry, Goodison has published collections of short stories and essays, as well as the memoir From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island, which in 2008 was the recipient of one of Canada's largest literary prizes, British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and in May 2009 was featured on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.

In 2019, Goodison was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Biography

Early years

Lorna Gaye Goodison was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on 1 August 1947, her birthday coinciding with Emancipation Day. She was one of nine siblings (who include the award-winning journalist Barbara Gloudon). Goodison was educated at St. Hugh's High School, an Anglican high school in Jamaica, and studied at the Jamaica School of Art, before going on to the Art Students League of New York, where she studied under African-American painter Jacob Lawrence.

As well as painting, Goodison has written poetry since her teenage years, some of her early poems appearing anonymously in the Jamaica Gleaner. She has described poetry as "a dominating, intrusive tyrant. It's something I have to do – a wicked force". She states that Derek Walcott was a major influence on her writing. She has spoken of how Dante and his Divine Comedy impacted on her work, and has said: "I didn't choose poetry—it chose me."

In her 20s, back in Jamaica, Goodison taught art and worked in advertising and public relations before pursuing a career as a professional writer. She began to publish under her own name in the Jamaica Journal, and to give readings.

In the early 1990s, Goodison began teaching part of the year at various North American universities, including at the University of Toronto and at the University of Michigan, where she was the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. and is now professor emerita. In 2019, she was appointed Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Mona campus.

Writing

Goodison's first book to be published was the 1980 volume of poems Tamarind Season. 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 (1988), 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, described as "a book of risky journeys, mappings and re-mappings through Spain, Portugal, Canada and her homeland of Jamaica as the poet navigates place, history and imagination", won the Poetry category of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, when the judges stated: "In Oracabessa the distinctive voice of Lorna Goodison–an elegant, captivating fusion of international English and Jamaican Creole–presents segments of autobiography as a series of travels. Goodison's persuasive art is a many-sided celebration of spiritual search."

Her 2021 poetry collection, Mother Muse, was reviewed in The Guardian by Ben Wilkinson, who wrote: "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).

In 2008, her non-fiction book, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island – "a lyrical and luminous tale that spans several generations" – won British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, Canada's largest prize for non-fiction. The memoir was featured on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in May 2009, read by Doña Croll. Lisa Fugard's review 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 has said that during the dozen years it took her to write From Harvey River she drew inspiration from the work of John Keats, whom she first encountered studying the English Romantic poets on her Jamaican school syllabus.