Mother Muse

Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison has come to be recognised as a hugely significant and influential contemporary author. Through poems rooted in her Caribbean heritage and upbringing she has created a body of enchanting, intelligent and socially aware poetry in the authentic registers of her own tongue. —Simon Armitage

[Lorna Goodison’s] language is often spare and exact, and the portraits cut directly to the social realities that shape people’s lives. Many of these poems are detailed studies in character and they teach much about culture: it resides in people, and by contemplating others, we expand our understanding of our culture. Lorna Goodison goes further: she maps language onto this, and it is an English deeply inflected with the speech, life and rhythms of Jamaica. —Kaie Kellough