Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in Chapelton, Jamaica, in 1952. He left Jamaica in 1963 to join his mother, who had emigrated to London two years before, and went to Tulse Hill Comprehensive in Brixton. He joined the Black Panthers and organised a poetry workshop within the movement. His first volume of poems, Voices of the Living and the Dead, appeared in 1974. His landmark second volume, Dread Beat an’ Blood (1975), was recorded, and a film of the same name was made by the BBC as a documentary of a young poet in the making.

In 1977 he was awarded the Cecil Day Lewis Fellowship as a writer in residence in the London Borough of Lambeth. He went on the Keskidee Arts Centre as a Library Resources and Education Officer. His other volumes and albums of poems include Forces of Victory (1979), Bass Culture (1980), Inglan is a Bitch (1980), Making History (1984), Tings an’ Times (1991), and More Time (1998). Linton Kwesi Johnson continues to perform internationally and his work has been translated into Italian and German. He also has his own record label, LKJ Records, and his own music publishing company, LKJ Music Publishers.