Olive Senior
Olive Senior is the Poet Laureate Jamaica 2021 – 2024. She is the prizewinning author of books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature
Colonial Girls School – Read by Olive Senior
Tropic Love – Read by Olive Senior
Dead Straight – Read by Olive Senior
Hurricane Story – Read by Olive Senior
About Olive Senior
As Poet Laureate of Jamaica 2021-2024, Olive Senior’s main platform is that of encouraging the reading and writing of eco-poetics and other activities promoting environmental awareness under the slogan: “I see my land”.
Olive Senior’s work includes books, articles and lectures that span multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature. Her twentieth book: Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems has just been published by Carcanet in the UK. It follows on Pandemic Poems: First Wave (2021) a work consisting of alphabet poems derived from the language of the Covid-19 pandemic. This chronicle of our times is ongoing: individual poems appear on social media as “Pandemic Poems: Second Wave”.
Her work is the subject of numerous critical essays and has been translated into many languages, most recently Arabic (Gardening in the Tropics), Spanish (Shell), Korean and three South African languages (Anna Carries Water) and a French selection of her poetry (Un Pipiri M’a Dit). Her poetry book Gardening in the Tropics has been a textbook on the CAPE syllabus in Caribbean schools and has been on the International Baccalaureate syllabus. Other works such as Summer Lightning have been taught in schools and universities worldwide. Her poem ‘Plants’ is currently on the syllabus of the US Advanced Placement (AP) exam; her early poem ‘Colonial Girls School’ has been translated and widely shared and ‘Guinep’ appears in The Best of the London Underground.
Summer Lightning has been a BBC Book at Bedtime, to name a few of the ways her work has found worldwide resonance.
Her popularity as one of the Caribbean’s foremost writers was cemented when four of her books were included in the first compilation in 2021 of “The 100 Caribbean Books that Made Us” organised by the Bocas Literary Festival.
Olive Senior
Poet Laureate 2021-2024
Find out more about Olive Senior
Poet Laureate Activities
Nominate a living Jamaican Poet to the JPA
Click to submit your poet
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Olive Senior
Poet Laureate 2021-2024
Find out more about Olive Senior
Poet Laureate Activities
Nominate a living Jamaican Poet to the JPA
Click to submit your poet
