SOURCE: “Mothertongue Voices in the Writing of Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison,” in Motherlands: Black Women's Writing from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, The Women's Press, 1991, pp. 246-53.

In the following excerpt, Pollard examines how the use of a blend of various dialects, or codes, spoken in Jamaica, affects the flow and meaning of Goodison's poetry.

Although poetry and good prose share many features, there are several differences, not the least of which is the terseness of the poetic form. An examination of mothertongue in poetry, in this case Lorna Goodison's poetry, is qualitatively different from the exercise just performed on Senior's prose.

Pamela Mordecai and Edward Baugh have both commented on Goodison's ability to slide from one to the other code of the Jamaican speech community. Mordecai notes the significance of the effective use of code-sliding as part of the ‘mix-up’ that is Jamaican culture.¹ Baugh's...