In December 2025, The PJ Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy (INAFRICARA) welcomed Professor Lorna Goodison—Jamaica’s former Poet Laureate and an internationally acclaimed poet, essayist, and writer—for a courtesy visit with The Most Honourable P. J. Patterson, Statesman-in-Residence.
The visit was warmly received, as Professor Goodison is a Distinguished Author with the Institute. Widely regarded as one of the Caribbean’s foremost literary figures, it was both a pleasure and an honour for the Institute to host her. During the visit, Professor Goodison presented her latest literary work, Dante’s Inferno, and engaged in wide-ranging conversations on Jamaican and Caribbean life, as well as ongoing efforts to provide relief to communities most affected by Hurricane Melissa in western Jamaica.
The Institute was also pleased to record an episode of Africa Caribbean Conversations featuring Professor Goodison, produced by UWITV. This recording will be released shortly and will be available on UWITV’s channel and INAFRICARA’s YouTube page. Viewers are encouraged to follow our YouTube channel and look out for this rich and unmissable conversation between Professor Paulette Ramsay and Professor Lorna Goodison.
Professor Lorna Goodison has received numerous national, regional, and international honours, including the Musgrave Gold Medal (Institute of Jamaica); the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas; appointment as the first Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus; Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2017–2020); the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Poetry (Yale University); and the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People. She is also the recipient of the Order of Distinction, Commander Class, awarded by the Government of Jamaica in 2013.
She is presently Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan, where she served as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afro-American Studies.
