KNOWN fondly on her Caribbean island and throughout the Jamaican diaspora as “Miss Lou”, Louise Bennett-Coverley was a cultural icon on a par, among her own people, with Bob Marley, one of many artists she influenced through her poetry in the island’s patois.
Marley, who initially dreamt of being a soul singer after the style of the American Sam Cooke, credited her with giving him the pride and conviction to include in his songs words in his own dialect — which until then had been considered a marketing liability.

Although she lived in Canada for almost the last two decades of her 86 years, for reasons involving her husband’s health, Bennett-Coverley was considered the mother of Jamaican culture and was granted the Order of Jamaica by the Government in 1974, giving her the official title “the Honourable”. Her return visits in recent years were treated like state occasions.

The Jamaican immigration inspired her to write one of her most famous poems, Colonization in Reverse, which was a light-hearted satire but unwittingly predicted the backlash against immigration from right-wing politicians such as Enoch Powell:

What a joyful news, Miss Mattie
Ah feel like me heart gwine burs’
Jamaica people colonizin’
Englan’ in reverse
By de hundred, by de tousan
From country and from town
By de shipload, by de planeload
Jamaica is Englan’ bound

Louise Bennett-Coverley, MBE, folk poet, comedian and entertainer, was born on September 7, 1919. She died on July 26, 2006, aged 86.