Lorna Goodison, Jamaican poet laureate and author of Redemption Ground, is the 2019 recipient of The Queen’s Medal for Poetry, following in the footsteps of Simon Armitage, John Betjeman and W H Auden.

“I am honoured and deeply grateful. As one of a generation of Commonwealth writers whose engagement with poetry began with a need to write ourselves and our people into English Literature, I feel blessed. And as a Jamaican poet who has always felt that my ancestors too are deserving of odes and praise songs, and who did not see them in what I was given to read, I am glad that I set out to write these poems.

“Love and justice, hope and possibility, healing and redemption are the themes I’ve always turned to, and that this enterprise has led to my being placed in the company of the memorable poets who have been awarded this medal before me is truly humbling.” Lorna Goodison

You can read Lorna’s essays and poems in her latest collection, Redemption Ground.