Background
Figueroa was born in Jamaica, where he was educated at Street George"s College.
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Figueroa was born in Jamaica, where he was educated at Street George"s College.
University of London.
He played a significant role in the development of Anglophone Caribbean literature both as a poet and an anthologist. He also taught in Jamaica, Britain, the United States, Africa and Puerto Rico. In 1946 he went on a British Council fellowship to London University to study for a teaching diploma and a master"s degree in education.
He subsequently taught in some London schools, and spent six years as an English and philosophy lecturer at the Institute of Education.
He also contributed criticism, stories and poetry to the British Broadcasting Corporation"s Caribbean Voices radio programme produced by Henry Swanzy. In Jamaica Figueroa became the first West Indian to be appointed to a chair at the University College of the West Indies, and the first Dean of the Faculty of Education.
Between 1964 and 1966 he was a visiting professor first at Rhode Island University and then Indiana University. In the early 1970s he become Professor of Humanities leading the Department of Education of the Centro Caribeno de Estudios Postgraduados, Puerto Rico.
He later spend time as a professor at the University of Jos in Nigeria.
In the 1980s he moved to the United Kingdom, where he worked for the Open University, was a Fellow at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, and an adviser in multicultural education in Manchester. He edited the pioneering two-volume anthology Caribbean Voices (volume 1: Dreams and Visions and volume 2: The Blue Horizons, 1966 and 1970 respectively), comprehensive landmark collections of West Indian poetry. He was also the first general editor of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series.
His own poetry "reflects his origins as a Jamaican of descent and a Catholic who, whilst deeply committed to the Caribbean, was concerned to maintain heritage without apology.
He insisted that drums were not the only Caribbean musical instrument (no doubt a dig at Kamau Brathwaite) and championed Derek Walcott"s relationship to the classical and European literary tradition. Ironically, one of Figueroa"s most effective poems is in Nation language." In the words of Andrew Salkey, "The phrase "cosmopolitan poet" does not really adequately describe him or the impact that he has had on Anglophone Caribbean poetry, but it certainly goes some way in defining a part of his concern in not being tagged as regional or provincial.
This is so because he is absolutely free from national limitations.".
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He contributed to the development of the University College of the West Indies as an early member of staff, and had a parallel career as a broadcaster, working for various media organizations including the British Broadcasting Corporation.