La « dub poetry » : évolution d’un genre

Abstract

Dub poetry is a form of oral poetry which developed in Jamaica in the 1970 's and which drew its inspiration from the rhythmic patterns and lyrical concerns of Jamaican popular music (reggae). A new art form thus appeared, situated at the crossroads of popular music and poetry, two fields of activity that were deemed to be incompatible. The stylistic and thematic developments of dub poetry gave rise to a heated debate, and doubts were expressed as to the literary quality of such an art form. Moreover a number of dub poets began to distance themselves from the thematic and formal constraints of a genre of poetry that they found limiting and repetitive. Dub poetry was in crisis, but the poets themselves managed to get out of the impasse in which they found themselves by revitalizing dub poetry from a thematic and stylistic point of view. Today dub poetry remains a living and rejuvenated form of poetry.