’I came to poetry through politics’ -Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Other Lives

Abstract

Linton Kwesi Johnson made his name as a poet in the 1970s and became associated with the movement known as ‘dub poetry’, which had been developing for several years both in Jamaica and in England. He published several collections of poems and released a number of records, which made him popular with a multicultural audience in Europe. Johnson’s merits as a poet are today acknowledged and in 2002 Penguin Books published a collection of his poems entitled Mi Revolueshanary Friend, a rare honour awarded to few living poets. Johnson has performed all over the world and gives poetry readings on a regular basis, thus making poetry accessible to a wider audience. That said, Linton Kwesi Johnson came to poetry rather late and embraced it as a vehicle for his ideas and his struggle for social justice. He tends to see poetry as a channel through which he can convey a certain message. This paper proposes to look at the way Johnson’s poetry shows traces of his cultural activism and political commitment, which represent alternative ‘careers’ in LKJ’s life. As he said in an interview with Mervyn Morris, he ‘can do anything’ and could easily have been a politician or a librarian. Three alternative personae can be distinguished in Linton Kwesi Johnsosn’s poetry: the political agitator, the cultural commentator cum reggae journalist, and lastly the chronicler of West Indian life in England. These three personae are by no means exclusive and cohabit with the persona of LKJ the poet. They have all substantially influenced his poetry, both at a formal and at a thematic level.