Description
We are delighted to welcome literary titan, Linton Kwesi Johnson, in conversation about his latest book, Time Come, published as part of his 70th birthday celebrations.
One of the greatest writers and poets of our time, as well as a hugely respected activist, Linton is a genuine cultural icon. As prolific as he is profound, Linton’s career began in the 1970s when he first emerged as a revolutionary reggae poet.
Time Come is Linton’s latest book and first prose selection, which brings together some of his most powerful nonfiction work, including book and music reviews, lectures, and speeches. Spanning five decades, this collection draws on his Jamaican roots and on Caribbean history to explore the politics of race that still informs the modern Black British experience.
Related Book
About the Author
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson, born in 1952, is a Jamaican-born reggae poet and activist who came to the UK in 1963 and lives in Brixton. In 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. He is widely regarded as the father of ‘dub poetry’ in the UK, a term he coined to describe the way reggae DJs blend music and verse. He has recorded several albums, many on his own LKJ Records label, and has toured the globe. LKJ’s most recent awards include the 2020 PEN Pinter Prize from English PEN and, in 2021, being made an Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of the West Indies.
About the Chair
Dr Emily Zobel Marshall
Dr Emily Zobel Marshall is of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales. She is a Reader in Postcolonial Literature at the School of Cultural Studies at Leeds Beckett University.
She is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (published in 2012 by the University of the West Indies Press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (published in 2019 by Rowman and Littlefield).
She has had poems published in several international journals and anthologies and a forthcoming collection, Bath of Herbs, published by Peepal Tree Press in July 2023.
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