OLIVE SENIOR

Olive M7arjorie Senior (b. 1941 in Trelawny, Jamaica) is a Jamaican poet and short story writer currently living in Canada. She went to Montego Bay High School For Girls, then at age 19 joined the staff of the Jamaica Gleaner in Kingston. She later won a scholarship to study journalism in Cardiff, Wales, and then at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. While at university she began writing fiction and poetry. On her return to Jamaica, she worked as a journalist before joining the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of the West Indies, where she edited the journal Social and Economic Studies. In 1982 she joined the Institute of Jamaica as editor of the Jamaica Journal. She also oversaw the publication of a number of books on Jamaican history and culture. After Hurricane Gilbert hit Jamaica in 1988, Senior moved to Europe, where she lived for short periods in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, before settling in Canada in the early 1990s. She returns to Jamaica almost every year. Senior has published three collections of poems: Talking of Trees (1985), Gardening in the Tropics (1994), and Over the Roofs of the World (2005). Her short story collection Summer Lightning (1986) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize; it was followed by Arrival of the Snake Woman (1989, 2009) and Discerner of Hearts (1995). Her non-fiction works include The Message Is Change (1972), about Michael Manley's first election victory; A-Z of Jamaican Heritage (1984, expanded and republished as Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage in 2004); and Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean (1991) Senior's work often addresses questions of Caribbean identity in terms of gender and ethnicity. She has said: "I've had to deal with race because of who I am and how I look. In that process, I've had to determine who I am. I do not think you can be all things to all people. As part of that process, I decided I was a Jamaican. I represent many different races and I'm not rejecting any of them to please anybody. I'm just who I am and you have to accept me or not." In 2005, Senior was awarded a Musgrave Gold Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature.

Olive Senior worked in journalism in Jamaica and Canada, and lives alternately in both countries. She spends much of her time giving readings and conducting workshops internationally. She has been writer in residence or visiting international writer at Universities in Canada, the West Indies, Britain and the United States. Her work has been broadcast in Canada, Britain and the Caribbean and she is represented in numerous anthologies. Olive Senior has published two books of poetry: Talking of Trees (1986) and Gardening in the Tropics (1994). She is the author of three collections of short stories: Summer Lightning (1986) which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1987, Arrival of the Snake-Woman (1989) and Discerner of Hearts (1995) and of several non-fiction works on Caribbean culture, including: A-Z of Jamaican Heritage (1984) and Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean (1991). Although Olive Senior now spends half of her time in Canada, it is the flavour of the Caribbean which pervades her poetry. She writes from a broad perspective, having worked as a journalist in both Jamaica and Canada, and as an author of short stories and non-fictional prose works. There is in her poems a subdued evocation of the ordinary, the familiar and the homely. Her tone is conversational, the effects are secretive and fleeting like the gold of macca and 'the weeds which mark our [the original inhabitants of Jamaica's] passing'. The critic Michael Dash, reviewing Gardening in the Tropics, suggests a kinship with Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bishop. 'With Rhys she shares a feeling of doubt regarding the craft of writing, which is never thought worthy.' And with regard to Bishop, ' we sense a similar unflappable poise even when dealing with the most disturbing subjects.' While writing about the turbulent Tropics, Olive Senior displays a clarity and quiet sanity that can come from distance and solitude. She deals with moral issues, with the environmental crisis brought on by single-crop agriculture, and deforestation, but she handles her subjects with subtle irony and humour and her tone is always relaxed. Even when addressing Jamaica's old colonizers, as in 'Meditation on Yellow':