The Department of Literatures in English of the UWI, Mona launches volumes of poetry by two outstanding Jamaican writers, Velma Pollard and Earl McKenzie on Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 11 am at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona.

Velma Pollard’s moving collection, Leaving Traces is the latest in an impressive, critically acclaimed body of work. Dr. Pollard, who was Dean and Senior Lecturer in Language Education in the Faculty of Humanities and Education prior to her retirement, is widely known as an educator and for her research on Creole languages of the Anglophone Caribbean; she authored the 1994 monograph Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari, as well as for her poetry and fiction.  Her 1992 novella Karl, which has just been re-published, won the Casa de las Americas prize in 1992.  Her several collections of poetry include The Best Philosophers I Know Can’t Read and Write (2001), Shame Trees Don’t Grow Here (1992),) and Crown Point and Other Poems (1988), and she is also the author of Considering Woman (1989) and Homestretch (1994). Dr. Pollard was awarded a Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica in 2006.

Earl McKenzie’s The Almond Leaf will satisfy readers already fond of his carefully crafted, quietly powerful poems.  Dr. McKenzie, who is a retired Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, is the author of two novels, A Boy Named Ossie: A Jamaican Childhood (1991) and Two Roads to Mount Joyful and Other Stories (1992); his previous volumes of poetry are Against Linearity(1993)  and A Poet’s House (2004). He has written extensively in the field of philosophy, and is also an accomplished painter, whose work has been featured in Writers Who Paint: Three Jamaican Artists. Dr. McKenzie was awarded a Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica in 2000.

The public is invited.