PENGUIN BOOKS
Selected Poems
Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in Chapelton, Jamaica, in 1952. He left Jamaica in 1963 to join his mother, who had emigrated to London two years before, and went to Tulse Hill comprehensive in Brixton. He joined the Black Panthers and organized a poetry workshop within the movement. He entered Goldsmith’s College, University of London, in 1973, and studied sociology. His first volume of poems, Voices of the Living and the Dead, appeared in 1974. His landmark second volume, Dread Beat an’ Blood (1975), was recorded, and a film of the same name was made by the BBC as a documentary of the young poet in the making. His poems, which use Caribbean dialect and the rhythms of reggae and dub, are a powerful voice of disaffected dissent and radical politics. In 1977 he was awarded the Cecil Day Lewis Fellowship as a writer in residence in the London Borough of Lambeth. He went on to the Keskidee Arts Centre as a Library Resources and Education Officer. In 2003 Linton Kwesi Johnson received an Honorary Fellowship from his alma mater, Goldsmith’s College. In 2005 he was awarded a Silver Musgrave Medal for distinguished eminence in the field of poetry by the Institute of Jamaica. His other volumes and albums of poems include Forces of Victory (1979), Bass Culture (1980), Inglan is a Bitch (1980), Making History (1984), Tings an’ Times (1991) and More Time (1998). In 2004 he released his first ever DVD, LKJ Live in Paris with the Dennis Bovell Dub Band. Linton Kwesi Johnson continues to perform internationally and his work has been translated into Italian and German. He also has his own record label, LKJ Records, and his own music publishing company, LKJ Music Publishers.
Selected Poems
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published as Mi Revalueshanary Fren in Penguin Classics 2002
Reissued under the new title with additional material in Penguin Books 2006
3
Copyright © Linton Kwesi Johnson, 2002, 2006
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
‘Di Anfinish Revalueshan’ was first published in 1991 in Tings an’ Times (Bloodaxe Books and LKJ Music Publishers
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-194137-0
To my mother
I Five Nights of Bleeding – Seventies Verse
Yout Scene
Double Scank
Dread Beat an Blood
Five Nights of Bleeding
Street 66
All Wi Doin is Defendin
Bass Culture
Reggae Sounds
Come Wi Goh Dung Deh
Song of Blood
Yout Rebels
Time Come
It Dread inna Inglan
Sonny’s Lettah
It Noh Funny
Want fi Goh Rave
Reality Poem
Forces of Victri
Inglan is a Bitch
II Mi Revalueshanary Fren – Eighties Verse
Story
Reggae fi Radni
Reggae fi Dada
New Craas Massakah
Di Great Insohreckshan
Beacon of Hope
Mekin Histri
Mi Revalueshanary Fren
Sense Outta Nansense
Di Good Life
Tings an Times
III New Word Hawdah – Nineties Verse
Seasons of the Heart
Hurricane Blues
More Time
Reggae fi Bernard
Reggae fi May Ayim
If I Woz a Tap Natch Poet
Liesense fi Kill
New Word Hawdah
BG (for Bernie Grant in memoriam 1934–2000)
Di Anfinish Revalueshan
I
Seventies Verse
last satdey
I nevah deh pan no faam,
so I decide fi tek a walk
doun a Brixton
an see wha gwaan.
di bredrin dem stan-up
outside a Hip City,1
as usual, a look pretty;
dem a lawf big lawf
dem a talk dread talk
dem a shuv an shuffle dem feet,
soakin in di sweet musical beat.
but when nite come
policeman run dem dung;
beat dem dung a grung,
kick dem ass,
sen dem paas justice
to prison walls of gloom.
but di breddah dem a scank;
dem naw rab bank;
is pakit dem a pick
an is woman dem a lick
an is run dem a run when di wicked come.
1. Desmond’s Hip City: a popular record shop in the 1960s and 1970s for Jamaican music, on Atlantic Road, Brixton.
I woz jus about fi move fahwod,
tek a walk tru di markit,
an sus di satdey scene–
yu know whe a mean–
when I site breddah Buzza
bappin in style
comin doun FRONT LINE.
him site a likkle sistah
him move fi pull a scank
but she soon sus him out
seh him dont in her rank;
soh when shame reach him,
him pap a smile,
scratch him chin,
but di sistah couda si tru him grin:
breddah Buzza coudn do a single ting.
‘Hail, Buzza!’ I greet him.
‘Love!’ him greet I back.
‘I a look a money, Buzza;
come fahwod wid some dunny.’
di breddah seh him bruk
him seh him naw wok
him seh him woman a breed
him seh him dont even hav a stick a weed.
but I site diffrant:
di bookie man jus done tek him fi a ride!
brothers an sisters rocking
a dread beat pulsing fire burning
chocolate hour an darkness creeping night
black veiled night is weeping
electric lights consoling night
a small hall soaked in smoke
a house of ganja mist
music blazing sounding thumping fire blood
brothers an sisters rocking stopping rocking
music breaking out bleeding out thumping out fire burning
electric hour of the red bulb
staining the brain with a blood flow
an a bad bad thing is brewing
ganja crawling, creeping to the brain
cold lights hurting breaking hurting
fire in the head an a dread beat bleeding beating fire dread
rocks rolling over hearts leaping wild
rage rising out of the heat an the hurt
an a fist curled in anger reaches a her
then flash of a blade from another to a him
leaps out for a dig of a flesh of a piece of skin
an blood bitterness exploding fire wailing blood and bleeding