With these unfortunate words a BBC commentator grudgingly greeted the news in 2002 that Linton Kwesi Johnson’s poetry had been included into the Penguin Classics series. Today I went to hear him. Johnson recalled that misplaced put-down and other insults (the Daily Telegraph ran a frontpage story ‘Reggae Rebel joins Betjeman’) as he recalled his musical and literary roots. I forgot my camera, so I will have to suffice with the more superior work of Liz Johnson-Artur, one of my favorite photographers. (While listening to Johnson today, I realized that his first album, Dread Beat An’ Blood, came out almost 30 years ago already and that he is a grandfather. But as the poet Lorna Goodison who introduced Johnson remarked, he is still ‘large.’)
3 responses so far ↓
RK // September 26, 2007 at 4:41 am
Johnson is a lion of both poetry and reggae. I’ve also just been listening to his early stuff this past week. I was introduced to him when I was a teenager, out on class boycott in the early 1980s in SA. Poetry was never the same again, nor reggae…
Sean Jacobs // September 26, 2007 at 9:48 pm
True dat.
koos de kock // July 3, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Yes I,a roaring lion,just checked out his Reggae Fi Radni yesterday after listening to Corey Harris’ tribute to Winston Rodney from his new album,Zion Roots.
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