John Figueroa (John Joseph Maria Figueroa) Biography

Jamaican poet and educator, born in Kingston, and educated at St George's College, Kingston, Holy Cross College, Worcester, Massachusetts, and at London University. He has held academic posts in Britain, the Caribbean, and Nigeria. Religious imagery, occasional allusiveness, classical restraint, and a concern for the ‘island folk’ characterize much of his poetry, but it is also notable for its sensuousness and vivid painting of landscape. He often counterpoints Creole, Spanish, and Latin with English in poems asserting wide cultural dimensions. Spiritual introspection and sensitivity to the physical are inherent in his work, which has been published in Blue Mountain Peak (1943), Love Leaps Here (1962), and Ignoring Hurts (1976). The Chase: A Collection of Poems 1941–1989 was published in 1992. He edited the pioneering anthology Caribbean Voices (1966; 1976).