Louise Bennett Coverley

Louise Simone BennettCoverley or Miss Lou, OM, OJ, MBE , was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, and educator. Writing and performing her poems in Jamaican Patois or Creole, she worked to preserve the practice of performing poetry and folk songs and stories in patois . She is located at the heart of the Jamaican poetic tradition, and has influenced other popular Caribbean poets, including Linton Kwesi Johnson and Paul KeensDouglas.

Louise Bennett was born onSeptember 1919 on North Street in Kingston, Jamaica. She was the only child of Augustus Cornelius Bennett, the owner of a bakery in Spanish Town, and Kerene Robinson, a dressmaker. After the death of her father in 1926, BennettCoverley was raised primarily by her mother. She attended elementary school at Ebenezer and Calabar, continuing on to St. Simons College and Excelsior College, in Kingston. In 1943 she enrolled at Friends College in Highgate, St Mary where she studied Jamaican folklore. That same year her poetry was first published in the Sunday Gleaner. In 1945 BennettCoverly became the first black student to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art after being awarded a scholarship from the British Council.

Source: Wikipedia