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Caribbean poets

20 articles

Conceição Lima

Conceição Lima, born Maria da Conceição de Deus Lima (1961–2026), was a Santomean poet and BBC journalist whose four poetry collections explore colonial history and independence.

David Mestre

David Mestre was the pen name of Luís Filipe Guimarães da Mota Veiga, an Angolan poet, journalist, and literary critic born in Portugal in 1948.

Frank Collymore

Frank Collymore (1893–1980) was a Barbadian teacher, poet, actor, and editor, best known for editing the literary magazine BIM and mentoring generations of West Indian writers.

Georges Castera

Georges Castera, also known as Georges Castera fils, was a Haitian poet and critic who wrote in Creole and French and won the 2006 Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe.

Giannina Braschi

Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet and novelist, born in San Juan in 1953, credited with writing Yo-Yo Boing!, the first novel in Spanglish.

Gilbert Gratiant

Gilbert Gratiant (1895–1985) was a Martinican poet and prose writer who wrote in both Creole and French, best known for the Creole fable collection Fab' Compè Zicaque.

Ida Faubert

Ida Faubert, born Ida Salomon Faubert, was a Haitian French poet, daughter of President Lysius Salomon, and one of the first Haitian women poets recognized internationally, writing from Paris.

Jacques Roumain

Jacques Roumain (1907–1944) was a Haitian poet, novelist, and ethnographer who founded the Haitian Communist Party and the Bureau d'Ethnologie, and wrote Gouverneurs de la rosée.

Jean Métellus

Jean Métellus (1937–2014) was a Haitian poet, novelist, playwright, and neurologist who left Haiti in 1959 under the Duvalier dictatorship and spent his life in exile in France.

Jean-Claude Charles

Jean-Claude Charles (1949–2008) was a Haitian poet, novelist, essayist, and journalist who spent his career in exile and coined the term enracinerrance for permanent displacement.

José de Diego

José de Diego y Martínez (1866–1918) was a Puerto Rican poet, lawyer, and orator known as the Father of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and Speaker of the legislature from 1907.

Julia de Burgos

Julia de Burgos (1914–1953) was a Puerto Rican poet and activist known for feminism and themes of Puerto Rican independence, considered a foremother of Nuyorican poetry.

Lola Rodríguez de Tió

Lola Rodríguez de Tió, born Dolores Rodríguez de Astudillo y Ponce de León, was a Puerto Rican poet and independence activist who wrote the original lyrics of "La Borinqueña."

Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison is a Jamaican poet, painter, and memoirist who served as Poet Laureate of Jamaica, 2017 to 2020, the first woman in the role.

Louise Bennett-Coverley

Louise Bennett-Coverley, known as Miss Lou (1919–2006), was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, and performer who established Jamaican Creole as a literary medium over a fifty-year career.

Mayra Santos-Febres

Mayra Santos-Febres is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, and professor, born in 1966, known for Sirena Selena vestida de pena and for founding the Festival de la Palabra.

Merle Collins

Merle Collins, born in 1950, is a Grenadian poet, novelist, and academic whose work centers on Grenada and the 1979–1983 Grenada Revolution; her books include the novel Angel (1987).

Pedro Mir

Pedro Mir (Pedro Julio Mir Valentín, 1913–2000) was a Dominican poet known for the poem Hay un país en el mundo, declared Poeta Nacional in 1984.

René Depestre

René Depestre is a Haitian-born poet, novelist, and essayist living in exile since 1946 who won the prix Renaudot in 1988 for Hadriana dans tous mes rêves.

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho

Ruy Duarte de Carvalho (1941–2010) was a Portuguese-born Angolan poet, anthropologist, and filmmaker known for joining ethnography and literature in works about southern Angola's pastoral peoples.