The room filled quickly on a mild Saturday evening as a booked-out Firth Hall awaited the appearance of a towering figure in dub-reggae and political activism. The Jamaican-born, British-based poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, reading in Sheffield as part of Off The Shelf literary festival 2022, is now 70 years of age. In the 1970s and ‘80s he was an emphatic spokesperson for anti-racism movements in Britain.These periods were defined by systemic harassment of black and minority-ethnic communities by police forces and wider society. Today, Johnson is still an active writer and performer, standing atop a creative legacy of defining contributions to the reggae canon (‘Inglan is a Bitch’, ‘Sonny’s Lettah’) and pioneering dub poetry tracks. In 2002 Johnson became the first black poet to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.
Supporting Johnson was the Jamaican-British poet and musician Danae Wellington (who is also Sheffield’s incoming poet laureate). Wellington’s generous, poignant works – read allowed on the night by the poet herself – address the challenges of social integration following emigration to Britain and the complex ideas of home. They set the pace for an evening of playful yet fundamentally serious verse.
Towards the end of her set, Wellington imagined an older relative’s wisdom as “a hymn that grew wings and flew.” Contained within this line was an anticipation of the elevated, political rhythms of Johnson that were to follow; a moment later, the man himself had briskly walked out on stage and greeted his audience.
Johnson performs with an astonishing musicality and deep poetic might. His sharp wit plays comically on his ageing figure; taking a seat before beginning to read, he quipped: “I am unable to stand in one place for too long nowadays,” referring ostensibly to his joint problems, yet tacitly preparing the audience for contact with restless poems that are still alive and reverberating through contemporary society.
The steady, almost incantatory cycles of Johnson’s delivery spoke of a still-festering anger at the murderous consequences of race hate. His pronounced inflections and drawn-out vowel sounds turned the poems into a kind of all-encompassing vibration that overtook the hall. To contextualise specific pieces, Johnson punctuated his readings with stories of discrimination and resistance from his younger days in London. The poem ‘Sonny’s Lettah,’ he recounted, was written in support of protests following the woefully inadequate police response to the New Cross Massacre of 1981, in which twelve black teenagers died in a house fire likely started by local far right National Front sympathisers.
The most recent edition of his Selected Poems also contains more current works. A reflection on the first COVID lockdown entitled ‘Di First Lockdaun’ is a delicate meditation on the togetherness to be found in urban parks and the patterns of introspection that were encouraged by isolated pandemic living. Read with his characteristic attention to rhythm and vocal emphasis, it’s a poem haunted by spectres of death – the “wallin soun of sirens” from deserted streets. Its recital bookended an evening of poetry reaching across five decades yet contained within the life of a single person. Listening to Johnson was a reminder of the political agency of words, and of the still-current imperative to fight (or write) towards racial equality.
