First Poems

George Campbell's poems began appearing in the 1930's, blast: through the colonial fustian of much current Jamaican poetry: First Poems, published in 1945, allowed the young Neville Dawes to feel, "we no longer needed to write poetry over the Victorian grid with 'Pan' still sleeping in the brake." Campbell was dubbed "the poet of the revolution" by one of Jamaica's founding political fathers, Norman. Manley, and even though there was no poet of the revolution, he was the one West Indian poet whom Derek Walcott acknowledged as an inspiration in finding a modern poetic voice.

George Campbell wrote about the struggle for independence; about the appalling social conditions that drove the poor to revolt; and about the rising pride of black Jamaicans in their attempts to overcome centuries of oppression. He wrote in the hope and consolation to be derived from religious faith, though his was a faith in which Jesus and Lenin were not incompatible icons. He also Wrote about love, its ecstasies and bitter-disappointments, and some of his very best and most enduring poems are luminous celebrations of Jamaica's landscapes and the-beauty of the black body.

George Campbell was a journalist and critic at the Daily Gleaner and Public Opinion in Jamaica. He was the cofounder of the literary magazine Focus and a consultant for the Institute of Jamaica and the People’s National Party news archives.