Velma Pollard

Velma Pollard (born 1937) is a Jamaican poet.

Life
Pollard grew up in Woodside, a rural village in Jamaica, where her mother was a teacher and her father a farmer. She won her first prize for poetry at the age of seven.

She was educated at Excelsior High School in Kingston and at the University College of the West Indies. She received an M.A. in Education from McGill University, Montreal, and a second M.A. teaching of English teaching from Columbia University, New York.

Pollard has taught in high schools and universities in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and the United States. From 1975 she taught at the University of the West Indies,, where she rose to Senior Lecturer in Language Education and Dean of the Faculty of Education.