Lorna Goodison at International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature EditorLorna Goodison was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica just last month and is the first woman in the job, which she’ll do until 2020. She’s over from the States, where she is Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies at the University of Michigan, and begins a UK tour – lucky us – right here in Manchester, where the publisher of her career-defining Collected Works, Carcanet, is based.
Lorna has published nine collections of poetry, three collections of short stories (including By Love Possessed) and an award-winning memoir, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People, and her work has been included in many major anthologies and collections of contemporary poetry over the past 25 years. She has won numerous awards for both poetry and prose, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Gold Medal of Jamaica and one of Canada’s largest literary prizes, the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.