“What You Love Will Save You”

In 2017, Lorna Goodison became Jamaica’s second postindependence poet laureate, following the role’s revival with the installation of Mervyn Morris in 2014. In her three-year tenure, Goodison maintained an active public schedule and sought to share with Jamaican youth the power of poetry as a tool of personal and social transformation.

Her signature program, All Flowers Are Roses—named for her 1995 poetry collection To Us, All Flowers Are Roses—was designed to strengthen the resilience of young girls from the inner city. Twenty-five girls, aged eleven to fourteen, took part in a five-week summer series that coupled poetry writing with self-defense. Goodison also edited the anthology New Voices, a collection of prize-winning and short-listed poems from the National Library of Jamaica’s young poets’ competition during her tenure. Goodison aimed to use the publication as a launching pad for the young voices included. 

In this interview, conducted by Zoom in October 2024, Goodison reflects on her tenure and shares insights into the value of poetry and the poet laureate program. 

Kellie Magnus: Before you were selected Poet Laureate of Jamaica, how familiar were you with the poet laureate program and the work of the laureates who preceded you?

Lorna Goodison: I was very fortunate to grow up in a house with a writer. All things to do with writing and literature in Jamaica were of interest to me from a very early age. I remember vaguely that Tom Redcam was regarded as Jamaica’s poet laureate, and then when [J. E. Clare] MacFarlane was made poet laureate [in 1953], my sister covered the event. Then there was this long period where there wasn’t any such thing as a poet laureate. What we knew as Jamaican poetry for a long time were the poems by George B. Wallace. He was a manager for Carib Theatre, and he used to write poems that would appear in the Sunday Gleaner. At the other end of the spectrum, you had Claude McKay, but he was away, so he was like the poet “over the waters.” The poet I loved the best was Philip Sherlock. Later, you had people like Mervin Morris, and then Dennis Scott and Tony McNeil. I was on the periphery, because I was just starting to show my work, although I used to publish my poems in the Gleaner, anonymously, when I was at school. What I was aware of, but I wasn’t sure why, was that Louise Bennett was a completely different entity. She was the most popular Jamaican poet among ordinary Jamaican people then, but nobody thought of her when they were talking about poetry with a capital P.

KM: Can you say more about that? As you were developing your voice as a poet, what messages were you getting about what was considered “poetry with a capital P,” and how did those messages impact you?

LG: Well, certainly it wasn’t thought that if you’re writing in Jamaican dialect that was serious poetry. You could have a line or two for color. You could have somebody in the poem say a few things, but I don’t think people were encouraging you to write in Jamaican dialect and to present that as serious poetry. 

When I was twelve, my sister went to the United States on one of those USIS fellowships. She worked at a newspaper in Ohio, where she met Langston Hughes. She interviewed him, and he seemed to have really been taken with her. She had a book of his, The Dream Keeper, and he wrote this lovely inscription in it. I still have the book. I remember reading from that book a lot, also because it has illustrations, and I love the idea of words and images going together. All those things, including that book by Langston Hughes, were feeding into my imagination as a poet.

KM: When you were selected as poet laureate, what message(s) did you want to spread about poetry?

LG: By that time, I’d taught at the University of Michigan for over twenty years. I taught a lot of young people, a lot of them African American athletes who ended up playing football in the [National Football League]. By the time I got to be poet laureate I’d already been thinking—if I were given a chance to interact with young Jamaican lovers of poetry, what would I do? 

I came up with the All Flowers Are Roses program because I thought the way the athletes approached poetry was wonderful. A lot of them would come in fresh from practice, and they’d be kind of pumped, and they wouldn’t be afraid of the poem. A lot of young people think of poetry as a plot to make them look stupid. They don’t understand it right out, so they think that you’re setting them up to make a wrong answer. But these guys were used to taking chances, they were used to just diving in. I loved the way they approached poetry, and I thought I could do something like that, teach some sort of physical activity, which is how I came to self-defense. Young people love that. So the program became self-defense and self-expression.

I was very lucky, just after I got the role, to get the Wyndham-Campbell [Literature] Prize. And I used quite a bit of that to travel to Jamaica a lot. I think if you’re the poet laureate you need to be present as much as possible. I would travel to Jamaica once a month or every six weeks. I went to schools all over. When I did the All Flowers Are Roses program, I was there a lot. I would spend weeks with the girls, going three times a week. Cherry Natural taught the self-defense part of it and some of the poetry, but I was very hands on.

As a child who grew up in a house with eight siblings, I remember saying poems to calm down, to carve out my own space. Because I learned by heart all these poems, I had a relationship with poetry from very early. Sometimes I’d go to weddings with my mother, when she made the dress, and if they were giving speeches, I’d get up and recite a poem. 

I thought to myself, this is a gift that life gave me, and if I could give it back to as many young people as possible, I would love to do that. Just to tell them that poetry is a gift that is given to us to make our lives easier. It is not something to trip you up and make you look stupid when people ask you hard academic questions. Poetry is a gift that is given to you to help to make your life easier. I thought, I want to do a program to reach some of those young people, particularly young girls, and have them build a relationship with poetry so that they can have something for themselves. They can have somewhere they can go that is private, that nobody can encroach on, but that can do all the things that poetry does.

KM: You said at the launch of the program that the aim was “building their confidence and self-esteem.” How did you see that unfold? 

LG: There were diverse groups in the program, all kinds of people with different needs. Once we started to talk about poetry, they would use it as a vehicle to express themselves, their own hopes and dreams, their aspirations, their difficulties. It created a place for them to shape thoughts and experiences, some that might have gotten too big for them or too hard for them, because that is what poetry does. Certainly, I know that’s what it did for me and does for me. I can either be overwhelmed by something, or I can shape it as a poet.

KM: As part of your tenure as poet laureate, you also focused on poetry prizes. Can you say more about why those were important to you? 

LG: I was really determined to get together a set of prizes. I remember working as a writer in Jamaica and it was a very lonely life. In those days there were no prizes, no fellowships; you got nothing. The reason some of us became writers is because we had to; we never had a choice. It was just our gift, and we chose to work at that gift without benefit and very little encouragement or recognition. 

I remember those long periods when I used to do a lot of jobs so that I could do my own work. I would do a freelance job to get enough money so I could write and paint for two weeks. I lived like that for years. I always thought that if I got a chance to give some tangible help to some young people, I would. In the first year, because I had a relationship with the University of Michigan, I managed to get them to sponsor a Helen Zell Prize. Then my husband gave me the money for a second award, the Louise Bennett Prize. Then I got the Wyndham-Campbell, and I was able to extend the Louise Bennett to prizes named for Eddie Baugh and Michael Cooke, too. 

The other thing I wanted to do as poet laureate was to make Jamaicans aware. We have had some extraordinary people connected with the literary world that Jamaican people know very little about. Michael Cooke was the first Black professor in the Department of English at Yale University. He was a Jamaican from Montego Bay. He was also a great footballer. They said that people used to come to watch him play because he played like Fred Astaire, like a dancer. He was just this fabulous, great person. He was also very encouraging to me. I thought, here’s my chance to make Jamaicans know about Michael Cooke by creating a prize in his name. 

Everybody got one thousand US dollars. I wanted to give real help, tangible help, so that is something I think we should look at too. I’ve always done that. Anytime I have received any kind of prize, the first thing I do is, I take out some and I give it to some other artist. Not that I don’t need it, but I remember what it is like to be struggling as an artist in Jamaica.

KM: What were some of the other challenges in the role of poet laureate and how did you navigate them? 

LG: I didn’t see them as challenges. Winsome Hudson, the national librarian at the time, established the program. And then she left and Beverly Lashley [became the national librarian]. They were both so encouraging. The advantage was that nobody was set on anything. The mandate of the poet laureate is very general. You should promote poetry, but everything else was allowed. They gave me free rein to come up with the program and the prizes. 

I was determined that we should have an anthology for young people. There are all kinds of people in that anthology [New Voices]. There’s somebody who did an MFA at Oxford and people who don’t have conventional qualifications. I know for a fact that if you can say, “I came out in this anthology,” it will get you somewhere. I’ve known people who were in the anthology who have gotten into workshops and things like that because they’re in there. 

Abigail Henry was extraordinary. We got it all done. Bless all the people who judged the prizes—Anthea Morrison, Mervyn Morris. Professor Eddie Baugh gave so much support. That anthology will last. Some young poet can point to it and say, “I was first published in this anthology.” I wanted the prizes to make a difference in somebody’s life. Just like old time Jamaican people say—encouragement sweetens labor. 

One more thing about that anthology is that one of the guys who won came from near my mother’s part of Hanover. I was just so touched. Sometimes what we do in the culture just takes place in Kingston. I was very determined to reach people in different parts of the island. The Eddie Baugh Prize was mainly for people from Portland, and the Michael Cooke was for the western end of the island. I did a lot of thinking about how much I wanted to impact people all over Jamaica, as opposed to just donating some money. 

KM: Does it concern you that the prizes and the anthology ended with your tenure?

LG: I don’t think it’s fair to look at it that way. I think every poet laureate should be allowed to put their mark on the program. I looked at poets laureate in other societies, and every one of them has a program that people associate with such and such a person’s tenure. Put your stamp on it. You should come with your ideas.

KM: You seem to have valued most the ability to connect with a wide cross section of Jamaicans through poetry. Are there any moments of connection that stand out to you?

LG: There was a little boy, I remember I gave him a Langston Hughes poem, and I said, “You think you can memorize this poem?” He was a brilliant little boy. And he said, “I can’t have it for you tomorrow, but I’ll have it for you the next day, Miss.” Man, that little boy got up there and he said that poem. “Night coming tenderly, black like me,” and the entire place was washing away with tears. The people who were cleaning put down the broom and sat down. And when the little boy recited Langston Hughes, I just knew that poetry—I go back to where I started—poetry is a gift that is given to us to help make our lives easier. It’s a beautiful thing. I wanted to bring that to as many people in Jamaica as possible.

KM: Would you say that’s your legacy as poet laureate?

LG: I’m not going to make those big pronouncements. There are some who may remember me as the lady who taught them to like poetry. I just say I went to a lot of schools. I went to a lot of different places. I just hope very much that some children got the gift of poetry through that program. The ones who got the prizes, maybe some of them will be in a position to pass it on. One day they will pass it on.

I think what you love will save you and I love poetry. I’m sure if more people are presented with poetry as a way of helping them, of building some sort of inviolable space inside themselves where society can’t brutalize them, it would make a difference. I would love to see more and more people being presented with poetry in that way. 

Kellie Magnus is the executive director of the Caribbean Culture Fund. She is a Jamaican writer whose nonfiction work focuses on Caribbean arts and culture. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Prize for writers in the Caribbean. She is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow.