Velma Pollard

About Velma Pollard

Velma Pollard is a retired Senior Lecturer in Language Education in the School of Educational of the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. Her major research interests have been Creole Languages of the Anglophone Caribbean, The Language of Caribbean Literature and Caribbean Women’s Writing. Articles in these areas appear in local and international journals. She has published a handbook: From Jamaican Creole to Standard English-a handbook for teachers (1994,2003) and a monograph: Dread Talk-the language of Rastafari (1994, 2000).

Pollard is involved in Creative writing and has published poems and stories in regional and international journals and anthologies. She has a novel, three collections of short fiction and five books of poetry on the market. Her novella Karl won the Casa de las Americas prize in 1992. Her creative publications are listed below:

• 1988 Crown Point and Other Poems
• Peepal Tree Press, Leeds
• 1989 Considering Woman
• The Women’s Press, London
• 1992 Shame Trees Dont Grow Here
• Peepal Tree Press, Leeds
• 1992 Karl (bilingual edition)
• Casa de las Americas, Havana
• 1994 Homestretch
• Longman House, Harlow
• 1994 Karl and Other Stories
• Longman House, Harlow
• 2001 The best philosophers I know cant read and write
• Mango Publishing, London
• 2008 Leaving Traces, Peepal Tree Press, Leeds
• 2008 Karl, Mango Classic Series, Mango Publishing, London
• 2010 Considering Woman I&II Peepal Tree Press, Leeds
• 2013 And Caret Bay Again, Peepal Tree Press, Leeds