DREAD ALERT

The dub poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson is publishing his first book of prose, a fine addition to his impressive CV that includes music journalist, label owner and punk and post-punk reggae avatar. Man free-lance: Rich Davenport

- Rich Davenport

The arrival of the Windrush Generation in Britain enriched society and culture, having a profound effect on the development of music in this country. Readers wishing to take a deep dive into the music imported and created by the first Caribbean settlers to arrive in 1948, and enjoyed by those in the next three decades, and by their children, should check out the National Caribbean Heritage Museum’s Windrush 2022 playlist on Spotify. In between Lord Kitchener’s infectious calypso postcard London Is The Place For Me (1948) and Captain Ska’s The Windrush (2018), you’ll find Sonny’s Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem), Linton Kwesi Johnson’s forceful indictment of the way in which racist elements within the police force abused the “Suspected Person” law to stop, search and arrest black youths in disproportionately high numbers. A highlight of the Forces of Victory album (1980), the track encapsulates Johnson’s deft knack of chronicling black British history in poems that are both eloquent and relatable.

Johnson’s ability to convey incisive insights into socio-political matters has seen him become the first living poet (also, the first black poet) to be published in Penguin’s Modern Classics series (Mi Revalushanary Fren, 2002). In the book’s afterword, he succinctly describes his work, and its motivation: “Poetry for me was never a calling. It was more like a visceral need for self-expression. Much of what I wrote came out of the Black experience in Britain and our struggles for racial equality and social justice.”