Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1947, Lorna Goodison is widely regarded as one of the island's most beloved poets. She was raised in a family of nine children who cherished books and writing. However, during her public school years, comparisons between her writing and that of her sister led Goodison to keep her poetry private. When she anonymously published some of her poems in a Jamaican newspaper during high school, she continued to conceal her identity. This hesitation persisted throughout her time in art school. Eventually, as Goodison has mentioned, her poetry became a dominant force, overshadowing all other forms of creative expression. Although she still paints, including creating illustrations for her collections, Goodison finds that poetry best conveys her life experiences.

Despite her enduring passion for writing, upon graduating from college, Goodison's primary goal was to secure a job to support herself. She believed that teaching might offer her the time to continue writing poetry, so she took positions at Jamaica College and a local high school. During this period, she began to publish her poems openly under her own name. As her reputation grew, she received opportunities to travel and read her poetry internationally. The more she shared her work, the more she realized she could confidently embrace the title of poet.

Goodison's first poetry collection, Tamarind Season (1980), was published when she was in her early thirties. Over the next twenty-five years, she produced nine additional collections of poetry, including To Us, All Flowers Are Roses (1995), Traveling Mercies (2001), and Controlling the Silver (2005), which features the poem "The River Mumma Wants Out." In 1999, she was honored with Jamaica's Musgrave Gold Medal for poetry. Goodison also writes short stories, some of which are compiled in Fool-Fool Rose Is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005). As of the early twenty-first century, she spent part of each year on Jamaica's north shore and worked as a professor at various colleges in the U.S. and Canada, including Radcliffe, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto.