debut: 11/14/02
198,719 runs
A truly great and classy woman
Velma was married to a Guyanese for decades - an Anura street well known family.
Deepest sympathy to all including kids, grandkids, siblings, friends and colleagues.
Big up the Woodside peeps
You were loved sister
Velma was married to a Guyanese for decades - an Anura street well known family.
Deepest sympathy to all including kids, grandkids, siblings, friends and colleagues.
Big up the Woodside peeps
Beloved educator, linguist, writer and poet Velma Pollard, known for her passion for Jamaica's Patwa language, passed away at her Kingston home on February 1 at the age of 87, leaving the regional literary community bereft.
Born in 1937 in the rural village of Woodside in St. Mary, a place with deep historical roots dating back to the Taíno period, Pollard's father was a farmer and mother, a school teacher. Along with her sister Erna Brodber — who later became a literary icon and folk historian — she developed a love for the creative arts, having been raised in an environment steeped in tradition and folk knowledge.
Pollard started early, winning her first poetry prize at primary school at the age of seven. She attended Excelsior High School in Kingston before pursuing higher education at the then University College of the West Indies, now University of the West Indies (UWI), where she studied languages. She later earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University, a master’s in education from McGill University, and a Ph.D. in language education at UWI. For decades, she was a senior lecturer in language education in the Faculty of Arts and Education at UWI's Mona campus.
Born in 1937 in the rural village of Woodside in St. Mary, a place with deep historical roots dating back to the Taíno period, Pollard's father was a farmer and mother, a school teacher. Along with her sister Erna Brodber — who later became a literary icon and folk historian — she developed a love for the creative arts, having been raised in an environment steeped in tradition and folk knowledge.
Pollard started early, winning her first poetry prize at primary school at the age of seven. She attended Excelsior High School in Kingston before pursuing higher education at the then University College of the West Indies, now University of the West Indies (UWI), where she studied languages. She later earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University, a master’s in education from McGill University, and a Ph.D. in language education at UWI. For decades, she was a senior lecturer in language education in the Faculty of Arts and Education at UWI's Mona campus.
You were loved sister
