Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley, also known as Miss Lou, was a poet, folklorist, author, and educator from Jamaica. She also held the titles of OM, OJ, and MBE.
Bennett, a poet who wrote and performed in Jamaican Patois or Creole, fought to keep alive the tradition of sharing poetry, folk songs, and stories in patois by demonstrating its viability as a vehicle for literary expression.
How old is Louise Bennett?
Louise Bennett was 86 years old at the time of her death. Bennett is the only child of her parents Augustus Cornelius Bennett and Kerene Robinson and she was born on North Street in Kingston, Jamaica, on September 7, 1919. Her dad owned a bakery in Spanish Town, and her mom was a seamstress.
After her father passed away in 1926, Bennett’s mother raised her mostly. She completed her elementary education at Ebenezer and Calabar before moving on to Kingston’s St. Simon’s College and Excelsior College.
She began studying Jamaican folklore in 1943 at Friends College in Highgate, St. Mary.
Her poems were initially published in the Sunday Gleaner in the same year. Bennett was the first black student to enroll in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London in 1945 thanks to a British Council scholarship.
