Poet Laureate To Promote Environmental Awareness

Newly appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Olive Senior, will be promoting environmental awareness with poetry.

Ms. Senior tells JIS News that she will be using poetry to sensitise the public about nature and environmental issues under a three-year project, titled, ‘I see my land’.

The title is based on the late Michael Garfield Smith’s patriotic poem ‘I Saw My Land in the Morning,’ which has also been set to music.

“I would love to use that as a way of saying that all of us need to get involved in the whole idea of protecting and preserving our environment, but also learning about our country,” Ms. Senior says.

The Poet Laureate tells JIS News that she is finalising the details of the project, but informs that she will be working with environmentalist, scientists and persons on the ground “to convince citizens of the need to take care of the environment”,

“It is our country and we need to take responsibility for what’s happening, and part of that is learning about Jamaica all over again,” she points out.

Governor-General, His Excellency the Most. Hon. Sir Patrick Allen, recently presented Ms. Senior with the official Poet Laureate sash and pin during a virtual investiture ceremony held at King’s House. Her appointment is for the period 2021 to 2024.

A poet laureate is selected from among a country’s most esteemed and accomplished poets and occupies an exalted position in the nation’s literary heritage. The person is tasked with creating an avenue for public involvement in the spoken art by stimulating the writing of poetry and improving youth appreciation of poetry.

The accomplished writer tells JIS News that she also intends to use her platform to encourage Jamaicans to write poetry.

She says that some people have an “elevated idea” that poetry is a grand thing that should be written in a William Shakespeare-style and taught in school.

“I want to dissuade people of that idea. Poetry is about us. It’s about our environment, it’s about who we are and you can write poetry about the simplest things,” she notes, revealing that she has written poems about snails.

Ms. Senior contends that writing a poem is easy.

“You need a piece of paper and a pencil and if you don’t have that, you have your mouth. This is what the spoken word is about and I say it is the most democratic of the arts because you don’t need a theatre, you don’t need a publisher. You can get your poems out there with the use of social media,” she says.

Born in the parish of Trelawny, Ms Senior says her love for the literary arts began at the age of four when she learned to read.

“I fell in love with reading and words…. but I think I always knew that I was going to be a creative artist. I was always drawing, reading, those are the things that I did as a child,” she relates.

“I was always writing, making up stories, making up poems, writing up stuff, so it was inevitable. There was nothing else that I’d planned to do in life but that,” she continues.

Today, Ms. Senior is the author of 18 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the commonwealth Writers Prize for her first book of short stories titled ‘Summer Lightning’ and the Writers Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, 2019.

Ms. Senior has made major contribution in the field of publishing, as editor of the University of the West Indies’ quarterly journal Social and Economic Studies and the Jamaica Journal (Institute of Jamaica).

She has been a faculty member of the Humber School for Writers, Humber College, Canada, since 1998; and has also served as a writing mentor for Diaspora Dialogues, Ontario Arts Council and others.

Internationally, she has served as writer in residence at universities in France, Australia, Canada, Scotland, England and the Caribbean.

At the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Ms. Senior published a collection of poems, titled ‘Pandemic Poems First Wave’ which she has been posting on social media.

She tells JIS News that she feels honoured to be named Poet Laureate of Jamaica.

“I am fortunate that awards have come to me… .  I don’t seek them out. You can’t live your life thinking or hoping that you are going to get something to reward you. The reward should be from your readers and finding people who value and like your work,” she says.

The distinguished poet says she will be using her position “to convince people that poetry is important and that it is something we should have in our lives, whether as readers or writers or reciters of poetry”.

The Poet Laureate of Jamaica Programme was re-established in 2014 through the combined efforts of the National Library of Jamaica, the Literary Arts Sub-committee of the Entertainment Advisory Board and the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment, now under the Ministry of Culture, Gender Entertainment and Sport.

Culture Minister, Hon. Olivia Grange, announced last year that the State Minister in the Ministry, Hon. Alando Terrelonge, would have direct oversight for the programme.

She said that the State Minister will work closely with the National Library of Jamaica to lift the profile of the programme and to “encourage more young people to participate and to ensure that it grows from strength to strength”.