Lorna Goodison, Jamaican poet and author
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.