The Festival of Wild Orchid

Ann-Margaret Lim's poetry is alert to all the contradictions of contemporary Jamaica. There are lyric and delicate poems that find fresh things to say about its land and seascapes, and its novelties as discovered by her child. These appear alongside pungent, arresting poems in response to the endemic violence, misogyny and poverty of a divided society.Lim writes in both Caribbean English and Jamaican patois, reflecting on her Chinese and African heritage, and on shaping experiences, good and bad. Hers is a feisty, questioning persona, charged with wit, an imaginative eye for revealing detail, and the warmth of celebration.Ann-Margaret Lim was born in 1976 and lives in Red Hills, Jamaica. She has been published in journals (including the Caribbean Writer and NYU's Calabash), anthologies and her country's two major newspapers, the Gleaner and the Observer. She has a BA in English Literature and has benefitted from workshops conducted by Wayne Brown, Mervyn Morris and Kwame Dawes, as well as the poetry of such greats as Derek Walcott.