Louise Simone Bennett-Coverly, a Jamaican poet and folklorist who popularised her country’s culture before its independence from Britain, died on July 27. She was 86.
Bennett-Coverly died at Scarborough Grace hospital outside Toronto, according to the government-run Jamaica Information Service. The cause of death was not released and hospital officials did not immediately return calls.
She had lived in Toronto for about 25 years.
Born in 1919, Bennett-Coverly was one of her country’s most beloved cultural icons.
She appeared in Kingston theatre productions in the 1940s, and in 1948 became the first black person to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Known in her native Caribbean country as ”Miss Lou”, Bennett-Coverly advocated the teaching of Jamaican culture, and in the mid-1950s joined the BBC’s Caribbean Service as a folklorist.
In 1953 she recorded an album, Jamaican Folksongs, and in 1966 published a collection of poems called Jamaica Labrish.
Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller described Bennett-Coverly as the ”essence of ‘Jamaican-ness”’.
”She was a great inspiration to me and a true example of the finest quality of Jamaican womanhood. She was part of the national landscape,” she said in a statement from the Caribbean island’s capital, Kingston.
Bennett-Coverly is survived by a son, Fabian Coverly, of Canada. — Sapa-AP