Sunday 18 January 2009

Performance Poets 3 – Benjamin Zephaniah

There are some people who confound the conventional wisdom that your school years prepare you for life and Benjamin Zephaniah is one of those people. A dyslexic, he left school at the age of 13 unable to read or write but even at that age he was writing and performing poetry.

His first poetry book was published in 1980 and he has written 10 others as well as seven novels and some plays, on top of all that he has also released several albums and recorded most recently with The Imagined Village. His style (unsurprisingly for someone of West Indian origins) is that of a dub poet and I never tire of listening to his rhythmical rhymings:



Here is a longer one Rong Radio.

3 comments:

Sezme said...

That reminds me of my British Lit. class. We studied literature of Caribbean, too. My professor would read with that cadence. Kind of funny because she was a 50/60-ish WASP. Heh.

Something about it just makes ya smile.

Sezme said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DBA Dude said...

rt, It is very smile inducing!