Lorna Goodison wins 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry

Celebrated Jamaican poet Lorna Goodison has added another prestigious international honour to an already distinguished literary career, winning the 2026 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry for her ground-breaking new translation of the 14th-century classic, Dante’s Inferno.

Goodison, Jamaica’s first female Poet Laureate, serving from 2017 to 2020, receives the US$2,000 prize for a work that boldly transports Dante’s epic journey into a Caribbean landscape, drawing deeply on Jamaican language, culture, history and identity.

The annual Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, presented in partnership with the Derek Walcott Estate and the Derek Walcott Festival in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, recognises a full-length book of poems by a living poet who is not a United States citizen, published during the previous calendar year.

The 2026 prize was judged by acclaimed poet, essayist, translator and biographer Rosanna Warren, who described Goodison’s work as “a translation that reworks the iconic 14th-century epic poem into a testament of Caribbean vernacular and heritage”.”

Published in 2025, Goodison’s Dante’s Inferno reimagines Dante Alighieri’s celebrated Inferno through a distinctly Jamaican and Caribbean lens, while remaining grounded in the architecture of the original. Goodison draws on the rich continuum of Jamaican speech and replaces Dante’s classical guide, Virgil, with Jamaica’s beloved cultural icon and poet, Louise Bennett-Coverley - “Miss Lou.”

At the Jamaican launch earlier this year, keynote speaker Dr Anthea Morrison, retired Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English at The University of the West Indies, Mona, reflected on the importance of preserving and validating Caribbean intellectual and creative traditions through literature.

The award represents another milestone in a remarkable literary journey spanning more than four decades. Among Goodison’s celebrated works is her 1986 collection, I Am Becoming My Mother, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Americas. Her acclaimed collection, Oracabessa, subsequently won the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry.

Beyond poetry, Goodison has published collections of short stories and essays as well as the acclaimed From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island. The memoir won British Columbia’s National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction in 2008 and was subsequently featured as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2009. In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

Goodison’s 2021 poetry collection, Mother Muse, also earned critical acclaim. Mother Muse places particular focus on two significant women in Jamaica’s musical history – Sister Mary Ignatius Davies, the legendary Alpha Boys’ School mentor who nurtured generations of outstanding Jamaican musicians, and celebrated dancer Anita ‘Margarita’ Mahfood. Through these and other women, Goodison explores lives ranging from the celebrated to the tragic and the largely unknown, giving poetic voice to their experiences and contributions.