With this highly praised collection of short fiction, Lorna Goodison demonstrates why she may be one of literature''s best-kept secrets. In the Pushcart Prize-winning title story, humble Dottie thinks her luck has turned when she meets Frenchie, the best-looking, if not most reliable, man in the whole of Jamaica. In "The Helpweight," an accomplished woman must bear the burden of an old flame''s renewed affections when he returns from a life abroad with his Irish bride in tow. And in "Henry," a young boy turned out of his house to make way for his mother''s lover sells roses on the street to survive. On a whim, he bites off a bloom, which he can feel burning inside his mouth like a red pepper light, hoping it will take root and beautify his own life. Poetically rendered, these and over a dozen other evocative stories create a world in which pride can nourish a soul or be its ruin and where people are in turn uplifted and undone by love.

"Throughout her life my mother [Doris] lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up."In the tradition of Michael Ondaatje''s Running in the Family and Carlos Eire''s Waiting for Snow in Havana comes Lorna Goodison''s luminous memoir of her forebears—From Harvey River. When Doris'' English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family''s home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the "fabulous Harvey girls" and where the rich local bounty of the land went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties and comforts of her parents'' house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to "hard life" Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters as they raise their family of nine children.In lush prose, Lorna Goodison weaves memory and island lore to create a vivid, universally appealing tapestry.

Writing in The Hudson Review,David Mason has characterized Lorna Goodison's work as a "revelationto me, much of it beautiful for its simple negotiation of the line betweenlife and art."One of the most distinguishedcontemporary poets of the Caribbean, Goodison draws on both African andEuropean inheritances in her finely crafted poems, which often carry asense of language's healing power in the face of the pain of the past.She deals thematically with the struggle of Caribbean women and writesin a fashion that has developed from conversational to more ritualistic.From reviews of Goodison'searlier works:"The evocative powerof Lorna Goodison's poetry derives its urgency and appeal from the heart-and-mindconcerns she has for language, history, racial identity, and gender."Andrew Salkey -- World Literature Today"A marvelous poet, oneto savor and to chant aloud."-- Pat Monaghan, Booklist

The lyric energy, compassion, humor, and tenderness that characterize Lorna Goodison's work are once again in evidence in Turn Thanks, her seventh collection. Here the Jamaican poet turns to acknowledge her own ancestors and those of her craft: mother and father, aunts and uncles, Africa, William Wordsworth, Vincent Van Gogh, the Wild Woman. "Whether you will receive this letter or not I cannot tell," she writes. "Still, I intend to send it . . . "

Renowned poet Lorna Goodison has written a new collection of elegies and praise songs which explore the close link between history and genealogy in the Caribbean experience. Her subjects range from the economic genius of market women to the complex beauty of the natural world.

Renowned poet Lorna Goodison has written a new collection of elegies and praise songs which explore the close link between history and genealogy in the Caribbean experience. Her subjects range from the economic genius of market women to the complex beauty of the natural world.  

A selection of poems by Lorna Goodison, who in 2017 was named Poet Laureate of Jamaica.

These beautifully crafted stories will introduce readers to the fiction of one of our literary bright lights – Lorna Goodison, the internationally renowned poet and award-winning author of the memoir From Harvey River. In sensuous language textured with the cadences of Creole speech, these stories vividly evoke a world where pride, injustice, love, and unexpected changes of fortune leave their mark but cannot extinguish the human spirit. When her past lover returns to Jamaica with his Irish bride, a successful businesswoman must contend with her old flame’s renewed courtship. A well-known chanteuse with humble beginnings tells a young female reporter the tale of her life’s great turnaround. In the Pushcart Prize-winning story “By Love Possessed,” Goodison reveals the melancholy and resilience of a woman whose illusions about her dream man come to a disturbing and abrupt end.With warm humour, empathy, and an unsentimental and perceptive eye for the foibles of human relationships, Goodison immerses us into the lives of an unforgettable community of people as they face challenges both intensely private and universally recognizable.

From the Hardcover edition.

This stunning new book of poems from internationally renowned poet Lorna Goodison opens in Spain and Portugal, conjuring up a new history of the Caribbean and a new way of setting up its heritage.     The title sets the tone for poems about backgrounds and outlines and shadows and sources of light. This extraordinary book -- "a wide lotus on the dark waters of song" -- is filled with surprises at every turn, as a Moorish mosque becomes a cathedral in Seville, a country girl dresses in Sunday clothes to visit a Jamaican bookmobile, and a bear appears suddenly, only to slip away silently into the trees on a road in British Columbia. The heartache of Billy Holliday singing the blues, the burden of Charlie Chaplin tramping the banana walks of Jamaica''s Golden Cloud, and the paintings of El Greco, the quintessential stranger, come together on the poet''s pilgrimage to Heartease, guided by a limping angel and inspired by the passage-making of Dante; the book ends with a superb version of the first of his cantos, translated into the poet''s Jamaican language and landscape with the gift of love.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

“Throughout her life my mother, Doris, lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up.”When Doris Harvey’s English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family’s home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the “fabulous Harvey girls,” and where the rich local bounty of Lucea yams, pimentos, and mangoes went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties of her parents’ house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to “hard life” Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters.In Lorna Goodison’s spellbinding memoir of her forebears, we meet a cast of wonderfully drawn characters, including George O’Brian Wilson, the Irish patriarch of the family who married a Guinea woman after coming to Jamaica in the mid-1800s; Doris’s parents, Margaret and David, childhood sweethearts who became the first family of Harvey River; and their eight children, Cleodine, straight-backed and imperious; serious Albertha, called “Miss Jo” because she was missing all sense of joviality; beautiful Howard, who dies an early death; Rose, whose loveliness inspires devotion but whose own heart is never fulfilled; taxi-man Edmund, who yearns for the freedoms of the big city; Flavius, who spends his life searching for the true church of God; large-hearted, practical-minded Doris, whose bottomless cooking pot often feeds more than just her family; and vivacious, hard-headed Ann, whose gift of reading hair tells her the future. In lush, vivid prose, textured with the cadences of Creole speech, Lorna Goodison weaves together memory and mythology to create a vivid tapestry. She takes us deep into the heart of a complete world to tell a universal story of family and the ties that bind us to the place we call home.From the Hardcover edition.

The Collected Poems (Second Impression) of Jamaica's Poet Laureate (2017-2020) and winner of The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2019. Lorna Goodison is a poet alive to places, from the loved and lived-in world of Jamaica where she began and started a family, to the United States and Canada where she has made her teaching career, but always re-connecting with her Caribbean roots. She travels with an ear alert to histories and voices. How differently English sounds in the tropics and in colder lands, at seaside in sunlight and on prairies, mountains and in cities. The same words say quite different things, depending on who speaks them and who's listening, obeying or resisting. She covers a wide range of subjects and themes, too. Her instinct is to celebrate being alive in a world that is rich but in peril. `And what is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvellous poems restore?' asks Derek Walcott. `Joy.' The `mango of poetry', eaten straight from the tree, Goodison somehow finds growing in Wordsworth country and in Sligo, in Russia and Norway, in Spain and Portugal which spilled their empires into the Caribbean, in Cape Town and Far Rockaway.

Finalist for the Governor General Literary Awards 2025Shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Lit Prize for Caribbean Literature 2026Longlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize 2026'Halfway tree. The journey of our life found me / there at midnight in a ramshackle state.' So begins Lorna Goodison's astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, a poet she once described as 'uncompromising as an Old Testament prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder'.This Jamaican Dante, a quarter-century in the making, is as much transformation as it is translation: the poet's narrator, its Dante figure, is now guided through an underworld by Goodison's great Jamaican predecessor Louise Bennett, 'Miss Lou' in the book. Goodison draws on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech yet securely grounds the action in Dante's formal architecture, bringing an entire world to life: we encounter other poets, including Goodison's friend Derek Walcott, as well as Caribbean politicians, reggae innovators and other public figures. Here, she recreates the journey through the 'unpaved and rocky road' of Dante's Hell for a contemporary audience and attempts to do for Caribbean vernacular what Dante did for his Italian language in the fourteenth century - endow it with an entirely new vocal music and power.

New Voices is a collection of the prize-winning and shortlisted works of the Poet Laureate of Jamaica Prizes for Poetry from 2017 to 2020, selected by Lorna Goodison. The poets featured here are new and emerging voices in the Jamaican literary landscape. Hailing from different backgrounds, they engage with a variety of subjects, public and personal, writing in both Jamaican language and standard English.From domestic dramas, to a praise song to a simple soup, to realities of life in Kingston's inner cities, these poems welcome the reader to step into new and vivid worlds as poets contemplate issues of place, identity, and universal human experiences of love and loss.We proudly introduce these new voices - fresh and full of promise. In the words of respected literary scholar Professor Jahan Ramazani, ""To read works by such a talented young group of emerging writers gave me hope for the future of poetry.""Poems by: Christopher Allen, Jovant?® Anderson, Rojae Brown, Khadijah Chin, Kaleb D'Aguilar, Lauren Delapenha, Rohan Facey, Remone Foster, Delano Frankson, Britney Gabbidon, Kacy Garvey, Trevann Hamilton, Jason Henry, Gail Hoad, Rozan Levy, Demoy Lindo, Romardo Lyons, Rhea Manley, Delroy McGregor, Nardia Reid, Shannon Smith, Lisa Gaye Taylor, Teddense Thomas, Kiseon Thompson, Peta-Gaye Williams, Sad?® Young

With this highly praised collection of short fiction, Lorna Goodison demonstrates why she may be one of literature''s best-kept secrets. In the Pushcart Prize-winning title story, humble Dottie thinks her luck has turned when she meets Frenchie, the best-looking, if not most reliable, man in the whole of Jamaica. In "The Helpweight," an accomplished woman must bear the burden of an old flame''s renewed affections when he returns from a life abroad with his Irish bride in tow. And in "Henry," a young boy turned out of his house to make way for his mother''s lover sells roses on the street to survive. On a whim, he bites off a bloom, which he can feel burning inside his mouth like a red pepper light, hoping it will take root and beautify his own life. Poetically rendered, these and over a dozen other evocative stories create a world in which pride can nourish a soul or be its ruin and where people are in turn uplifted and undone by love.

"Throughout her life my mother [Doris] lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up."In the tradition of Michael Ondaatje''s Running in the Family and Carlos Eire''s Waiting for Snow in Havana comes Lorna Goodison''s luminous memoir of her forebears—From Harvey River. When Doris'' English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family''s home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the "fabulous Harvey girls" and where the rich local bounty of the land went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties and comforts of her parents'' house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to "hard life" Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters as they raise their family of nine children.In lush prose, Lorna Goodison weaves memory and island lore to create a vivid, universally appealing tapestry.

Writing in The Hudson Review,David Mason has characterized Lorna Goodison's work as a "revelationto me, much of it beautiful for its simple negotiation of the line betweenlife and art."One of the most distinguishedcontemporary poets of the Caribbean, Goodison draws on both African andEuropean inheritances in her finely crafted poems, which often carry asense of language's healing power in the face of the pain of the past.She deals thematically with the struggle of Caribbean women and writesin a fashion that has developed from conversational to more ritualistic.From reviews of Goodison'searlier works:"The evocative powerof Lorna Goodison's poetry derives its urgency and appeal from the heart-and-mindconcerns she has for language, history, racial identity, and gender."Andrew Salkey -- World Literature Today"A marvelous poet, oneto savor and to chant aloud."-- Pat Monaghan, Booklist

The lyric energy, compassion, humor, and tenderness that characterize Lorna Goodison's work are once again in evidence in Turn Thanks, her seventh collection. Here the Jamaican poet turns to acknowledge her own ancestors and those of her craft: mother and father, aunts and uncles, Africa, William Wordsworth, Vincent Van Gogh, the Wild Woman. "Whether you will receive this letter or not I cannot tell," she writes. "Still, I intend to send it . . . "

Renowned poet Lorna Goodison has written a new collection of elegies and praise songs which explore the close link between history and genealogy in the Caribbean experience. Her subjects range from the economic genius of market women to the complex beauty of the natural world.

Renowned poet Lorna Goodison has written a new collection of elegies and praise songs which explore the close link between history and genealogy in the Caribbean experience. Her subjects range from the economic genius of market women to the complex beauty of the natural world.  

A selection of poems by Lorna Goodison, who in 2017 was named Poet Laureate of Jamaica.

These beautifully crafted stories will introduce readers to the fiction of one of our literary bright lights – Lorna Goodison, the internationally renowned poet and award-winning author of the memoir From Harvey River. In sensuous language textured with the cadences of Creole speech, these stories vividly evoke a world where pride, injustice, love, and unexpected changes of fortune leave their mark but cannot extinguish the human spirit. When her past lover returns to Jamaica with his Irish bride, a successful businesswoman must contend with her old flame’s renewed courtship. A well-known chanteuse with humble beginnings tells a young female reporter the tale of her life’s great turnaround. In the Pushcart Prize-winning story “By Love Possessed,” Goodison reveals the melancholy and resilience of a woman whose illusions about her dream man come to a disturbing and abrupt end.With warm humour, empathy, and an unsentimental and perceptive eye for the foibles of human relationships, Goodison immerses us into the lives of an unforgettable community of people as they face challenges both intensely private and universally recognizable.

From the Hardcover edition.

This stunning new book of poems from internationally renowned poet Lorna Goodison opens in Spain and Portugal, conjuring up a new history of the Caribbean and a new way of setting up its heritage.     The title sets the tone for poems about backgrounds and outlines and shadows and sources of light. This extraordinary book -- "a wide lotus on the dark waters of song" -- is filled with surprises at every turn, as a Moorish mosque becomes a cathedral in Seville, a country girl dresses in Sunday clothes to visit a Jamaican bookmobile, and a bear appears suddenly, only to slip away silently into the trees on a road in British Columbia. The heartache of Billy Holliday singing the blues, the burden of Charlie Chaplin tramping the banana walks of Jamaica''s Golden Cloud, and the paintings of El Greco, the quintessential stranger, come together on the poet''s pilgrimage to Heartease, guided by a limping angel and inspired by the passage-making of Dante; the book ends with a superb version of the first of his cantos, translated into the poet''s Jamaican language and landscape with the gift of love.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

“Throughout her life my mother, Doris, lived in two places at once: Kingston, Jamaica, where she raised a family of nine children, and Harvey River, in the parish of Hanover, where she was born and grew up.”When Doris Harvey’s English grandfather, William Harvey, discovers a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of those running from slavery, he gives his name to what will become his family’s home for generations. For Doris, Harvey River is the place she always called home, the place where she was one of the “fabulous Harvey girls,” and where the rich local bounty of Lucea yams, pimentos, and mangoes went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties of her parents’ house. It is a place she will return to in dreams when her fortunes change, years later, and she and her husband, Marcus Goodison, relocate to “hard life” Kingston and encounter the harsh realities of urban living in close quarters.In Lorna Goodison’s spellbinding memoir of her forebears, we meet a cast of wonderfully drawn characters, including George O’Brian Wilson, the Irish patriarch of the family who married a Guinea woman after coming to Jamaica in the mid-1800s; Doris’s parents, Margaret and David, childhood sweethearts who became the first family of Harvey River; and their eight children, Cleodine, straight-backed and imperious; serious Albertha, called “Miss Jo” because she was missing all sense of joviality; beautiful Howard, who dies an early death; Rose, whose loveliness inspires devotion but whose own heart is never fulfilled; taxi-man Edmund, who yearns for the freedoms of the big city; Flavius, who spends his life searching for the true church of God; large-hearted, practical-minded Doris, whose bottomless cooking pot often feeds more than just her family; and vivacious, hard-headed Ann, whose gift of reading hair tells her the future. In lush, vivid prose, textured with the cadences of Creole speech, Lorna Goodison weaves together memory and mythology to create a vivid tapestry. She takes us deep into the heart of a complete world to tell a universal story of family and the ties that bind us to the place we call home.From the Hardcover edition.

The Collected Poems (Second Impression) of Jamaica's Poet Laureate (2017-2020) and winner of The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2019. Lorna Goodison is a poet alive to places, from the loved and lived-in world of Jamaica where she began and started a family, to the United States and Canada where she has made her teaching career, but always re-connecting with her Caribbean roots. She travels with an ear alert to histories and voices. How differently English sounds in the tropics and in colder lands, at seaside in sunlight and on prairies, mountains and in cities. The same words say quite different things, depending on who speaks them and who's listening, obeying or resisting. She covers a wide range of subjects and themes, too. Her instinct is to celebrate being alive in a world that is rich but in peril. `And what is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvellous poems restore?' asks Derek Walcott. `Joy.' The `mango of poetry', eaten straight from the tree, Goodison somehow finds growing in Wordsworth country and in Sligo, in Russia and Norway, in Spain and Portugal which spilled their empires into the Caribbean, in Cape Town and Far Rockaway.

Finalist for the Governor General Literary Awards 2025Shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Lit Prize for Caribbean Literature 2026Longlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize 2026'Halfway tree. The journey of our life found me / there at midnight in a ramshackle state.' So begins Lorna Goodison's astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, a poet she once described as 'uncompromising as an Old Testament prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder'.This Jamaican Dante, a quarter-century in the making, is as much transformation as it is translation: the poet's narrator, its Dante figure, is now guided through an underworld by Goodison's great Jamaican predecessor Louise Bennett, 'Miss Lou' in the book. Goodison draws on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech yet securely grounds the action in Dante's formal architecture, bringing an entire world to life: we encounter other poets, including Goodison's friend Derek Walcott, as well as Caribbean politicians, reggae innovators and other public figures. Here, she recreates the journey through the 'unpaved and rocky road' of Dante's Hell for a contemporary audience and attempts to do for Caribbean vernacular what Dante did for his Italian language in the fourteenth century - endow it with an entirely new vocal music and power.

New Voices is a collection of the prize-winning and shortlisted works of the Poet Laureate of Jamaica Prizes for Poetry from 2017 to 2020, selected by Lorna Goodison. The poets featured here are new and emerging voices in the Jamaican literary landscape. Hailing from different backgrounds, they engage with a variety of subjects, public and personal, writing in both Jamaican language and standard English.From domestic dramas, to a praise song to a simple soup, to realities of life in Kingston's inner cities, these poems welcome the reader to step into new and vivid worlds as poets contemplate issues of place, identity, and universal human experiences of love and loss.We proudly introduce these new voices - fresh and full of promise. In the words of respected literary scholar Professor Jahan Ramazani, ""To read works by such a talented young group of emerging writers gave me hope for the future of poetry.""Poems by: Christopher Allen, Jovant?® Anderson, Rojae Brown, Khadijah Chin, Kaleb D'Aguilar, Lauren Delapenha, Rohan Facey, Remone Foster, Delano Frankson, Britney Gabbidon, Kacy Garvey, Trevann Hamilton, Jason Henry, Gail Hoad, Rozan Levy, Demoy Lindo, Romardo Lyons, Rhea Manley, Delroy McGregor, Nardia Reid, Shannon Smith, Lisa Gaye Taylor, Teddense Thomas, Kiseon Thompson, Peta-Gaye Williams, Sad?® Young