Linton Kwesi Johnson_ 'Class-Ridden_ Yes, But This is Still Home

7/30/2019 Linton Kwesi Johnson_ 'Class-Ridden_ Yes, But This is Still Home'

1/3

Linton Kwesi Johnson: 'Class-ridden?Yes, but this is still home'

Age has mellowed the reggae poet who voiced the experience of young black men in the1980s but don't imagine that he's joined the mainstream. Sarah Morrison meets LintonKwesi Johnson

Sarah Morrison

Sunday, 2 December 2012

The last time Linton Kwesi Johnson was honoured in Britain, he made front-page news.When one broadsheet announced that the "reggae radical" had become the second livingpoet and the only black one to be published in the Penguin Modern Classic Series,alongside the likes of Yeats and Betjeman, the outrage in some quarters was instant. Oneacademic complained that the publishers were "messing with the canon".

A decade on, the man made infamous by his poem "Inglan is a bitch", is about to behonoured again. Tomorrow, English PEN will award him its prestigious Golden PEN Award forlifetime literary achievement. The Jamaican-born poet and musician, who described policebrutality in Britain in the 1980s in poems such as "Sonny's Lettah", will join a list ofrecipients that includes Iris Murdoch, Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, John Berger, Salman

Rushdie and Margaret Drabble.

The self-styled "father of dub poetry" a term he coined to describe the way reggae DJsblended music and verse is the first to admit he was "very surprised" when he heard thenews. "I'm not exactly in the mainstream of the British literary scene; I'm nearer to theperiphery, and for that reason, it came as a bit of a shock," the 60-year-old tells me, aswe sit down at a table in his local south London pub. "If you look at the previous winners,I somehow don't fit into that group apart from Salman Rushdie, they're all white, verymainstream authors."

I tell him that English PEN described him to me as a "very unusual choice". This is the manwho saw poetry as "a cultural weapon" and used it to "articulate the experience of black

youth, growing up in a racially hostile environment". He always knew he wasn't in thebusiness of making friends.

"I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste," he tells me,sounding out every syllable of every word. Just as well, really. In the early 1980s, TheSpectator insisted that his phonetic spelling "wreaked havoc in schools and helped tocreate a generation of rioters and illiterates". Even last year, when he performed at anevent organised by Lambeth council to mark the 30th anniversary of the Brixton riots, theDaily Mail referred to him patronisingly as a "poet" (their quotation marks, not mine).

But just as I think Johnson is willing our meeting to be over, a man walks by whom herecognises. His face lights up, and an "all right, geezer?" follows, leaving the performerinstantly at ease. Johnson cracks a smile, as he tells me he is "pretty much a local guy".

He adds, proudly: "People used to call me Poet, and now they call me Mr Johnson." It's notthe new-found honours, he tells me, but the new grey hair.

It was almost 50 years ago that Johnson, aged 11, moved to London from Jamaica. Hestudied sociology at Goldsmiths, joined the Black Panther movement, met writers andmentors, and learnt that "black people write books too". Johnson's debut album, Dread
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/linton-kwesi-johnson-classridden-yes-but-this-is-still-home-8373870.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/linton-kwesi-johnson-classridden-yes-but-this-is-still-home-8373870.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/linton-kwesi-johnson-classridden-yes-but-this-is-still-home-8373870.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/linton-kwesi-johnson-classridden-yes-but-this-is-still-home-8373870.htmlhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/linton-kwesi-johnson-classridden-yes-but-this-is-still-home-8373870.html


2/3

Beat an' Blood, released in 1978, showcased poetry written in Jamaican patois, withrevolutionary politics set to a reggae beat. He was described by the writer Caryl Phillips asthe "first crossover voice, who made it possible for a generation to think of themselves asblack and c reative in literature, music, the media".

Yet he hasn't written a poem in years. He says it doesn't bother him at all. "If a poemhappens to come to me, I write it. But I am not bothered. If I never write another poem,so be it. I don't know whether I've written my best work. Some writers keep going onwriting and writing, but you reach a peak at a particular age, and then go on to writeinferior work."

Getting into his stride, he says: "I am a survivor of prostate cancer. Once you have adisease like cancer, you look at life a bit differently. Some things that were important nolonger seem as important as they were."

"I'm like an aircraft that's taken off, reached a certain height, and now I'm cruising," hesays. "At the end of the day, life's about realising one's human potential. I don't know ifI've realised mine, but I've certainly gone a long way towards realising some goals andsome dreams." One of those is Johnson's music company, LKJ Records, which puts out hisown recordings, as well as those of other artists, including Dennis Bovell. Set up in 1981to "put the music back into reggae", it allows him to retain his independence, which heinsists "is very hard in the music world".

And yes, six decades do seem to have tempered him. The biggest change? His attitude topoetry, which has "broadened" over the years. "When I began writing poetry, for me itwas a political act, it was a cultural weapon in our struggles. But of course, over theyears, as I've read more, my views have changed. Let's put it this way," he says, "a friendof mine likens the poetic world to the sea. He says there's room for all kinds of fishes inthe sea."

With a smile, and before he assures the photographer that he is "a pretty cool guy it'sthe age I'm at", he delves into politics. Suddenly, he is as resolute as he was during theBrixton riots and lauding "Di Great Insohreckshan". Yes, black Britons are "far moreintegrated into British society than when I was a youngster," he tells me, but he insiststhat "the problem of racism is still there".

"One only has to look at the relationship between black people and young black people,in particular and the police," he says. "The police are riddled with racism. It's endemic,like a cancer in the police force. Things are so bad that black officers have had to formtheir own association. The Police Federation is the bastion of racism in the police force."

While unwilling to talk about his family he lives with his partner, and has three adultchildren he says that his grandson has been repeatedly stopped and searched by thepolice. He was arrested himself in 1972, and he still remembers the names of the policeofficers who, he says, assaulted and framed him. He was acquitted the following year, butthe experience left him with little respect for the authorities.

As for the 2011 London riots, they were "just waiting to happen; they could happen againat any time". He doesn't stop there. Disappointed that there "doesn't seem to be a radicalleft any more", with all "politics at the centre or the right of centre", he refuses to vote innational elections (he votes only in local ones), and is unequivocal in his condemnation ofthe coalition. "I think this government is the most extreme I have experienced in thenearly 50 years that I've lived in this country," he says, adding that they are "using thefinancial crisis as a way of implementing neoliberal policies that even Mrs Thatcher in herheyday would not have contemplated".

But with that, he talks of future trips to Jamaica, the new education charity he haslaunched there, and of his mother, who has been the "biggest influence, as a humanbeing", on his life. I ask him what he thinks of England now, more than three decades afterhe dubbed it a "bitch".

"It's still very much a class-ridden society," he says. "But I can tell you that I'd rather livehere than a lot of other places I've seen. As a place, it's home for me."

Curriculum vitae


3/3

1952 Born in Chapeltown, Jamaica.

1963 Moves to London. Attends Tulse Hill secondary school and later Goldsmiths College.Joins the Black Panthers while still at school.

1970 Gets married to Barbara, whom he later divorces.

1974 Race Today publishes his first collection of poetry, Voices of the Living and theDead.

1977 He is awarded a C Day Lewis Fellowship, becoming writer-in-residence for theLondon Borough of Lambeth for that year.

1981 Sets up his own record label, LKJ.

1985 Releases album LKJ Live in Concert with the Dub Band, which is nominated for aGrammy. Several more albums follow in the 1990s.

2002 He becomes only the second living poet, and the first black poet, to have his workpublished in the Penguin Modern Classics series.

2012 He is awarded English PEN's Golden PEN Award for a lifetime's distinguished serviceto literature.

Documents

Linton Kwesi Johnson_ 'Class-Ridden_ Yes, But This is Still Home