Louise Coverly-Bennett (1919-2006), or Miss Lou, as she was fondly called, was a Jamaican poet, a performance artist, a folklorist, and a comedian. She became a strong proponent of the African influence on Jamaican culture and championed the Jamaican Creole language as an artistic medium long before it was popular to do so. Her body of work, which focuses on issues of both national and global import, has been instrumental in the formation of Jamaican identity at home and in the promotion and dissemination of Jamaican culture abroad.
