Mervyn Morris Biography

Jamaican poet, born in Kingston, Jamaica, educated at the University of the West Indies and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. In 1970 he began lecturing at the University of the West Indies, where he was subsequently appointed a Reader in West Indian Literature. The principal collections of his verse are The Pond (1973), On Holy Week (1976), Shadowboxing (1979), and Examination Centre (1992). His earlier verse, which made idiosyncratic use of conventional verse forms, commented wryly on a wide range of social issues raised by his personal experiences. The most notable development in his work has been towards the concentration and flexibility evident in Shadowboxing, in which poems of marked brevity are capable of a disturbing power of imaginative implication. His work as an editor includes Seven Jamaican Poets (1971) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Caribbean Short Stories (1990).