SOURCE: Senior, Olive, and Charles H. Rowell. “An Interview with Olive Senior.” Callaloo 11, no. 3 (summer 1988): 480-90.

In the following interview, Senior discusses the major influences on her writing, the function of her creative work, and the implications of being a Jamaican writer.

The following interview was conducted through the mails during the period of March-May, 1988, between Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A., and Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, two months following my meeting and talking with Olive Senior in Jamaica.

—C. H. R.

[Rowell]: If you had to assess your past in terms of your relationships with the arts, what would you say are the probable forces, experiences, or individuals that motivated you to become and shaped you as a writer—a poet and a fictionist?

[Senior]: I didn't grow up influenced by what I suppose you would call “the arts.” I was born and grew up in rural Jamaica...