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

LINTON KWESI JOHNSON

image

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published as Mi Revalueshanary Fren in Penguin Classics 2002

Copyright © Linton Kwesi Johnson, 2002, 2006

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

Contents

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

Five Nights of Bleeding

Seventies Verse

Yout Scene

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.

Double Scank

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!

Dread Beat an Blood

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