Kingston-born writer and poet laureate Lorna Gaye Goodison has been bestowed with a prestigious Yale University Literature Prize.
2018 Windham-Campbell Prize
Goodison, 70, currently teaches at the University of Michigan and has received the prestigious 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize awarded annually by Yale.
Established in 2013 with a gift from the late Donald Windham in memory of his partner of 40 years, Sandy M. Campbell, the prizes are among the richest and most prestigious literary prizes on earth.
Among eight prize winners
Goodison, who was educated at St. Hugh’s High School in Jamaica and the Jamaica School of Art, was among a group of eight writers to win the honor, which is given for literary achievement or promise. She also received the US$165,000 prize money to support her writing.
In reacting to the honor, Goodison, the author of 13 collections of poems: including ‘Tamarind Season,’ and two collections of short stories including ‘Baby Mother’ and the ‘King of Swords,’ said she was honored to win the prize and gave thanks on “behalf of me and my people.”
Writing since a teenager
Goodison has been writing poetry since her teenage years with some early poems reportedly appearing anonymously in the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper. 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. She then migrated from Jamaica and attended the Art Students League of New York.
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 while continuing to write and publish.
In 1986, six years after releasing her first book of poems, ‘Tamarind Season,’ she released ‘Am Becoming My Mother,’ followed by ‘Heartease’ in 1988 and ‘Poems’ in 1989. ‘Selected Poems’ was released in 1992 followed by ‘To Us, All Flowers Are Roses’ in 1995; ‘Turn Thanks’ (1999); ‘Guinea Woman’ (2000); ‘Travelling Mercies’ (2001); ‘Controlling the Silver’ (2005); ‘Goldengrove’ (2006); ‘Oracabessa,’ (2013) and ‘Supplying Salt and Light’ (2013).
Musgrave Gold Medal recipient
In 1999, she was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for contributions to literature and on August 6, 2013, she was awarded the Jamaican national honor of the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander (CD), “for outstanding achievements in Literature and Poetry.”
One year later, in 2014, she won the Poetry category of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for ‘Oracabessa.’
Goodison has exhibited her paintings internationally, and her own artwork is usually featured on the covers of her books. 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.”
