Huddersfield Literature Festival: Linton Kwesi Johnson on his Time Come collection and why he is nobody's spokesperson

It brings together some of his most powerful writings from over five decades, including book and record reviews published in newspapers and magazines, lectures, obituaries and speeches.

Speaking from the capital, he says: “I like to think of it as a kind of archive, as a kind of a record of my development over the years and I see it basically as a document of my learning process, basically me finding out about things. And the best way one learns, I think, is to read and then to write. Read, listen and write.”

Johnson was born on August 24, 1952 in Chapelton, a small town in the rural parish of Clarendon, Jamaica and came to London in 1963. While still at school - he later studied Sociology at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London - he joined the Black Panthers and helped to organise a poetry workshops while developing his work with Rasta Love, a group of poets and drummers.

His poems are typically delivered in the Jamaican patois language, often spoken over dub-reggae music.

In 1977, he was awarded a C Day Lewis Fellowship and became the writer-in-residence for the London Borough of Lambeth for that year. He went on to work as the Library Resources and Education Officer at the Keskidee Centre, which is regarded as the first home of black theatre and art.

His poems initially appeared in the journal Race Today, which in 1974 published his first collection, Voices of the Living and the Dead. Dread Beat An’ Blood, his second collection, was published in 1975 by Bogle-L’Ouverture and was also the title of his first LP, released by Virgin in 1978. In 1980 Race Today published his third book, Inglan Is A B****, and there were four more albums on the Island label: Forces of Victory, Bass Culture, LKJ in Dub and Making History, however Johnson’s own record label LKJ Records launched in 1981.

In 2002, Johnson became only the second living poet and the first black poet to have his work published in Penguin’s Modern Classics series, under the title Mi Revalueshanary Fren. His most recent awards include the 2020 PEN Pinter Prize - named in honour of Harold Pinter - and in 2021, being made an Honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of the West Indies.

His work has decried racial injustice, highlighting the brutality of police beatings on black Britons in the 1970s, condemning “wicked propaganda” in wake of the 1981 New Cross house fire and documenting the Brixton riots. His campaigning verse also brought attention to the plight of people in Yorkshire such as George Lindo, a Bradford man of Jamaican background who was wrongfully jailed for robbery and released after his conviction was quashed in 1979. Johnson was part of the George Lindo Action Committee and contributed the poem It Dread inn Inglan to the campaign.

Earlier in the 1970s he spent time in Leeds, often in Chapeltown, alongside people associated with the Uhuru Arts group, which was led by Errol Caesar, later known as Imruh Bakari.

Some progress has been made, believes Johnson, in changing society for the better.

“I think in our struggles for racial equality and social justice, we've changed the country quite a bit,” he says. “It’s a much better place than it was when I was a youngster growing up. And we've been successful in integrating ourselves into British society, which I think is a remarkable achievement.”

However, he resists the pedestal on which he has been put, giving short shrift when asked about a description of him as “the voice of the Windrush generation” in a 2018 article in the Guardian.

“People are always setting up people as the voice of the black community. Who appointed me as the voice?”

He adds: “I remember when I was a youngster that gangsters like Michael X - not to be confused with American Black Power leader Malcolm X - Michael X was being portrayed in the media as a leader of the black community. They always try to find people to appoint as spokesperson. I’m a spokesperson for nobody, I'm just expressing my point of view, mate.”

Johnson credits his wife, Sharmilla Beezmohun, with putting Time Come together.

It includes a Melody Maker critique of the Bob Marley song Smile Jamaica. “It was painting a kind of a wonderful picture of Jamaica which went against the grain of all his other more biting criticisms,” says Johnson.

In one essay, too, he answers critics in the press who in 2002 were “sounding the alarm that I'd been included into the canon of British poetry prematurely”, he says. "They were trying to say somehow that the fortifications of the canon had been breached by this imposter. And I wanted to make it clear to them that I had absolutely no intention of being part of the canon and that's not what I was about.”

Johnson released new poetry in lockdown, but generally is not writing so much these days. He says: “The muse has abandoned me because I didn't pay enough attention whenever she visited.”

Linton Kwesi Johnson will read and take part in a Q&A at the Lawrence Batley Theatre on April 1 from 7pm. Book tickets at: www.huddlitfest.org.uk