Velma Pollard

Peepal Tree Press have published four collections of Velma Pollard's poetry, Crown Point, Shame Trees Don't Grow Here, Leaving Traces and And Caret Bay Again, and a collection of short stories, fables and memoir, Considering Woman. 

Born in Jamaica in 1937, Velma Pollard was educated at Excelsior High School in Kingston and at the University College of the West Indies. She received an MA in Education from McGill University and an MA in the teaching of English from Columbia University. She taught in high schools and universities in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana and the USA ,and is retired from the University of the West Indies where she was Dean of the Faculty of Education.

She has always written. She won her first prize for a poem at the age of seven, but none of her work went beyond her desk until 1975 when encouraged by her sister Erna Brodber and others, notably Jean D'Costa who sent one of her stories to Jamaica Journal, she started sending pieces to journals in the region. Her novella Karl won the Casa de las Americas in 1992. Her monograph, Dread Talk - the Language of the Rastafari was published in 1994 by Canoe Press. She has also edited several anthologies of writing for schools.

She is the mother of three children.

An interview with Velma Pollard appears in Daryl C. Dance New World Adams: Conversations with Contemporary West Indian Writers.