Elean Thomas Biography

Jamaican writer, born in St Catherine, Jamaica, educated at the University of the West Indies and Goldsmiths' College, London. Active for many years in the women's struggles in the Caribbean, she participated in the movement for national independence and was a founder and International Secretary of the Workers Party of Jamaica. She has made her reputation primarily as a poet, although she says: ‘I call my pieces Word-Rhythms. I honestly believe it is pretentious to call them poems. They are merely word-sketches, word-photographs, word-drawings, word-paintings, word-beats.’ Her works include two collections of poetry with some prose stories, Word Rhythms from the Life of a Woman (1986) and Before They Can Speak of Flowers: Word Rhythms (1988) with a foreword by Ngugi and an introduction by Benjamin Zephaniah, and a novel, The Last Room (1991).