Linton Kwesi Johnson.

• Author: DiNovella, Elizabeth
• Position: Interview

Lyricist Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in Jamaica but has become Britain's most celebrated black poet. He immigrated to England as a child, part of the succeeding waves of West Indians who arrived in the UK in the last several decades. "My generation is the second generation," he says. "I call us the Rebel Generation." This generation would not put up with the racial abuse its parents did. "Through our rebellion, we helped change Britain," he says.

As a teenager in 1970, he joined the British Black Panthers and by the 1980s was a journalist and editor of the journal Race Today. He's also reported for BBC and Channel 4.

As a young man growing up in south London, Johnson saw many people his age criminalized under what was known in the neighborhood as "sus law." The police had resurrected a Victorian era law against vagrancy that had languished on the books. "Sus being short for suspicion," Johnson explains, noting that the common charge was "attempt to steal from persons unknown." His poem "Sonny's Lettah (antisus poem)" is about a young man writing to his mother from Brixton prison, telling her his little brother got arrested, as did he.

Mama, I really did try mi bes, but nondiless mi sarry fi tell yu seh poor likkle Jim get arres. LKJ (as he's known) writes poetry in Jamaican Creole and his live performances are mesmerizing, His voice thumps like a bass line. His words lilt and cut, telling stories of police brutality and racial oppression. But he also has written beautiful elegies for friends and family, including a dirge for his father, who died at fifty-six due to complications of diabetes.

"1981 is perhaps most significant of black experience in Britain," says LKJ, alluding to the New Cross Fire where thirteen blacks died. No one was ever convicted, but racial tensions in the neighborhood led many blacks to believe it was a firebombing. LKJ wrote "New Crass Massakah" as a protest.

wi did know seh it coulda happn yu know--anytime, anywhe it coulda be mi it couda be yu ... who fell victim to di terrah by nite In April that same year, police began "Operation Swamp 81," and harassed the black community. "It was the last straw," says LKJ. "There was a riot, and it spread." He wrote "Di Great Insohreckshad' about it.

LKJ has released a dozen albums. He married verse and reggae music into a new form known as dub. He recorded several albums on the Island label, including Forces of Victory, Bass Culture, LKJ in Dub, and Making History. In the...