Beloved poet Velma Pollard
February 9, 2025
Jamaican Velma Pollard has died
Educator, linguist, writer and poet Velma Pollard passed away at her Kingston home on February 1, at age 87.
She was born on March 26, 1937 to a father who was a farmer and a mother who was a schoolteacher, in the rural village of Woodside, St Mary, where she and her sister, the folk historian and literary icon Erna Brodber, both developed an early interest and love for the creative arts.
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Pollard won her first poetry prize as a girl of seven while at primary school. She would later go on to attend the Excelsior High School in Kingston before pursuing further studies at the University College of the West Indies (now The University of the West Indies), where she studied languages. Further studies were in the cards for her and she matriculated into Columbia University where she earned a master’s in English, then another master’s in education at McGill University, before gaining a PhD in language education at The University of the West Indies. She would teach in high schools and universities in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana and the USA before her retirement from The University of the West Indies where she was Dean of the Faculty of Education. After retirement, Pollard maintained a presence at the university, where she was a senior lecturer.
In the mid-70s, Pollard’s interest in literature grew and she began focusing on her own writing, publishing short stories and poems in periodicals, regional and international journals and anthologies. Locally, her work appeared in the Jamaica Journal and the Jamaica Observer’s Literary Arts and Bookends publications.
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Her novella Karl won the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1992 and other literary works include The Best Philosophers I Know Can’t Read and Write (2001), Homestretch (1994), Considering Woman (1989) and Crown Point and Other Poems — her first book of poetry, published in 1988. In 2013, Pollard released a collection of poetry titled And Caret Bay Again: New and Selected Poems. She has published five poetry collections and three short story collections.
The British publisher Peepal Tree Press has announced that Pollard’s novella Karl will be republished as a Caribbean Modern classic in April this year.
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Velma Pollard was the mother of three children.
