Kwame Dawes is Jamaica's new Poet Laureate

By Earl Moxam    

 

Renowned poet Kwame Dawes was on Wednesday morning installed as Jamaica's fourth Poet Laureate since Independence.

 

Professor Dawes, speaking at the investiture ceremony at King's House, stressed the importance of keeping poetry alive and supporting those who seek to pursue this avenue of expression. 

 

"To deprive poets of the freedom and the means to make poems and share poems is in essence to derive society of its memory, of its most intimate self, its most vital self. And I consider my role one of affirming this nation's desire to resist that erasure, to facilitate and make possible the room in which anyone caught in the dream and desire and compulsion to talk them talk, to articulate experience with the beautiful execution of language to remain available, available to them," he said. 

  

He succeeds Olive Senior, who served as Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2024.