The Christina Porter Memorial Poetry Lecture: Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison, the current Poet Laureate of Jamaica, is the author of ten acclaimed books of poetry, two collections of short stories, and the memoir From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People. Her work has been featured in the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the Longman Anthology of British Literature and the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry. A winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry, as well as numerous other awards for her writing, Prof. Goodison is also a painter who studied art in Jamaica and New York before devoting herself primarily to writing. Because of her work’s careful, lyrical attention to the way that Caribbean people inhabit space and manage their environments—both physical and psychic—she is an especially apt speaker for the Christina Porter Memorial Poetry Lecture, co-sponsored by the Department of Humanities and Media Studies and the School of Architecture.