Thomas MacDermot | |
---|---|
Born | 26 June 1870 Clarendon Parish, Jamaica |
Died | 8 October 1933 |
Nationality | Jamaican |
Occupation(s) | poet, novelist, and editor |
Thomas MacDermot (26 June 1870 [1] – 8 October 1933) [2] was a Jamaican poet, novelist, and editor, editing the Jamaica Times for more than 20 years. He was "probably the first Jamaican writer to assert the claim of the West Indies to a distinctive place within English-speaking culture". [3] He also published under the pseudonym Tom Redcam (derived from his surname spelled in reverse). [4] He was Jamaica's first Poet Laureate.
Thomas Henry MacDermot was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, the third of five children, [5] and spent much of his childhood in Trelawny. [2] He was educated at the Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, Jamaica. [4]
He was a teacher before taking up journalism, at The Jamaica Post, The Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times, of which he was editor for 20 years. [4] He worked to promote Jamaican literature through all of his writing, starting a weekly short story contest in the Jamaica Times in 1899. Notable among the young writers he helped and encouraged are Claude McKay [3] and H. G. de Lisser. [4]
In 1903, MacDermot started the All Jamaica Library, a series of novellas and short stories written by Jamaicans about Jamaica that were reasonably priced to encourage local readers. [6] Alongside his work as a journalist, he wrote two novels. The first, Becka’s Buckra Baby, is said to mark the beginning of modern Caribbean writing. [7] MacDermot's poems were not collected into a single volume until 1951. He was posthumously proclaimed Jamaica's first Poet Laureate for the period 1910-33 by the Jamaican branch of the Poetry League. [3]
MacDermot retired because of illness in 1922.
He died in an English nursing home in 1933, aged 63. [3]