Eric Merton Roach (3 November 1915 – 18 April 1974) was a Tobagonian poet and playwright.
Roach grew up in Mount Pleasant, Tobago: My village, Mount Pleasant, was a sprawling bushy compound of crude wattle or clapboard cabins with thatched or tin roofs, shabby like ourselves.
In later years it seemed to me that in my boyhood we were clinging to life by the skin of our teeth and did not realise our hardship because we knew nothing else.
[3]Between 1949 and 1955, his poetry was frequently broadcast on the BBC programme Caribbean Voices.
However, he became overwhelmed and depressed, and committed suicide in 1974, drinking insecticide before swimming in the ocean.