Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnsonis a UK-based dub poet. In 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. His performance poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with renowned British reggae producer/artist Dennis Bovell. Johnson's middle name, "Kwesi", is a Ghanaian name that is given to boys who, like Johnson, are born on a Sunday...
NationalityJamaican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 August 1952
CountryJamaica
The more I read my poems, the more I find out about them. I still read them with the same passion I felt when I wrote them as a young man.
That the language of the poetry of Jamaican music is rastafarian or biblical language cannot simply be put down to the colonizer and his satanic missionaries. The fact is that the historical experience of the black Jamaican is an experience of the most acute human suffering, desolation and despair in the cruel world that is the colonial world...
Once you have a disease like cancer, you look at life a bit differently. Some things that were important no longer seem as important as they were.
I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste,
Back in those early days when I began my apprenticeship as a poet, I also tried to voice our anger, spirit of defiance and resistance in a Jamaican poetic idiom.
The modern stuff, I can take it or leave it. I like its danceability, but the DJs talk a lot of nonsense.