Ausable Press: Mi Revalueshanary Fren


ABOUT THE AUTHOR \| SELECTED POEMS \| VIEW CART “Not a dialect, not strictly a ‘patois,’ either, and not a mere post-colonial version of Standard English, Jamaican Creole is a language created out of hard necessity by African slaves from 17th century British English and West African, mostly Ashanti, language groups, with a lexical admixture from the Caribe and Arawak natives of the island. It is a powerfully expressive, flexible and, not surprisingly, musical vernacular, sustained and elaborated upon for over four hundred years by the descendants of those slaves, including those who, like LKJ, have migrated out of Jamaica in the second great diaspora for England, Canada, and the United States. Fortunately, its grammar and orthography, like that of pre-18th century British English, have never been rigidly formalized or fixed by an academy of notables or any authoritative dictionary. It is, therefore, a living, organically evolving language, intimately connected to the lived experience of its speakers.” —from the Introduction by Russell Banks REVIEWS & COMMENTS "With fiery verse and spellbinding, often reggae-backed, performances, the Jamaican-born, London-based Johnson helped create the hybrid genre of dub poetry in the late 1970s. Mixing militancy with pathos, ballad forms with subtler narrative modes; LKJ (as he's known) remains a leading voice of Afro-Caribbean Britain. He took a giant step toward canonicity in 2002 when he became the first contemporary black poet given his own volume in the British series of Penguin Classics, which this first American book reprints, with a new introduction from novelist Russell Banks. Using Jamaican Creole, rather than standard English, LKJ tries at once to speak for a nation within a nation and to craft a populist idiom with potentially universal appeal, drawing terms and attitudes from Jamaican culture, biblical teachings and Black Power: 'All oppression/ can do is bring/ passion to di heights of eruption,' he promises; 'we're di forces af victri/ an wi comin rite through.' Here are manifestos for the African Diaspora, reggae protests against police brutality and, toward the end of the volume, introspective, even erotic, verse. His lingo poses no barrier to comprehension; more problematic for Americans might be poems based on news events (such as the 1981 New Cross Massacre in London) poorly publicized here. Includes CD of Johnson reading his poems." —Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) “Few poets of the last thirty years have approached his diversity of formal innovations; few have communicated so intensively via performances and recordings, as often as not with integral musical settings; and few have proved so effective politically . . . a living modern classic for real.” —Michael Horovitz, London Magazine “The man writes some of the most moving poetry to be found in popular music. The achingly sad ‘Sonny’s Lettah’ is alone worth the price of admission. “ —David Bowie, Vanity Fair