About the Organizer

Fueled by a desire at a young age to discover and create poetry, Jermaine Rolle didn’t know that this desire would blossom into a passion. At present he has written enough poetry for 3 books. However, so far he has only published one book of poetry. In December of 2015, Jermaine Rolle published his first book of poetry, Cries of a Poetic Soul, A Collection of Romantic Poetry. He decided to invest in his own vision by taking the route of self-publishing. As a youth, the organizer always searched for an avenue to display his love for writing poetry. As a result, he entered a local poetry competition and won. This experience only fed his passion to compete more but the opportunities were few. Over time he grew weary of the fake poetry competitions online that only sought to extract money from unsuspecting writers. It was at that point that he made a pledge to himself to create an avenue for poets to showcase their skills.

Several years later Jermaine Rolle would find himself as a police officer attached to Centerville Urban Renewal. This position provided him the vehicle to fulfill his pledge to create an avenue for poets. Therefore, he took advantage of the opportunity and created the Centerville Urban Renewal Poetry Competition in December of 2012. The competition is dedicated to primary school students in the Centerville Constituency. For five consecutive years the competition has produced 5 champions and a wealth of great literature from the youth of the nation. It has been the tradition of the program to treat the finalist like superstars, exposing them to various media avenues like radio stations and TV shows, where they could showcase the poetry that they produced. Over the years the finalists were also awarded significant prizes and were given the opportunity to be presented with their awards by the Governor General, the Prime Minister, or the Minister of National Security.

Jermaine Rolle was inspired by the success of the Centerville Urban Renewal Poetry Competition and is now fulfilling a bigger vision, to create a vehicle where the majority of the nation can participate in a poetry competition. Hence today we have the Bahamas Poetry Competition, a multi segmented poetry competition that engages primary school students, high school students and young adults.