About James Berry
James Berry (1924-2017) was an award-winning Jamaican-born poet who played a significant role in popularizing West Indian poetry in the UK, including as part of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement (CAM). His first full poetry collection was Fractured Circles, published in 1979, and in 1981 he became the first Caribbean writer to win the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition. The following year, he edited PLAN Poets, a poetry anthology marking 50 years of the Progressive League, of which Berry was a member. Berry’s second published collection was Lucy’s Letters and Loving (1982), poems in the persona of a Jamaican woman in Britain, and was followed by others including Chain of Days (1985), Hot Cold Earth (1995), and Windrush Songs (2007). He also published a second anthology of poems by black writers, 1984’s News for Babylon. Berry also wrote poems and stories for young people, winning the Smarties prize for children’s writing in 1987.Though it is frequently omitted from his bibliography, Berry edited the 1982 collection PLAN Poets, an anthology of poems by members of the humanist Progressive League, of which Berry himself was a member. In his own poetry, Berry emphasized values of compassion, cooperation, and the celebration of life, but did not shy away from confronting the racism and injustices he experienced in Britain and America. Described in his Guardian obituary as ‘a determined though unsentimental advocate of friendship between races’, Berry worked tirelessly to celebrate diversity while encouraging togetherness.
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