1 00:00:18,470 --> 00:00:26,690 Hello and welcome. My name's Ballester, I am chair of the board of the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford. 2 00:00:26,690 --> 00:00:33,860 This is a very significant and timely event which we're honoured to be hosting here at the faculty of English. 3 00:00:33,860 --> 00:00:41,450 I'm really delighted on behalf of the faculty to welcome two of Britain's leading authors who've been formative in the 4 00:00:41,450 --> 00:00:48,950 development of the tastes and sensibilities of so many readers and listeners in the United Kingdom and across the globe today. 5 00:00:48,950 --> 00:00:55,940 Just to explain this event a little bit, it's a culminating event in the Great Writers Inspire at Home Project, 6 00:00:55,940 --> 00:00:57,530 which is funded by Oxford universities, 7 00:00:57,530 --> 00:01:05,450 fell fund and housed in the English faculty under the inspiring leadership of our professor in world literature, Ellika, Burma. 8 00:01:05,450 --> 00:01:10,520 That project explores the ways in which contemporary black and Asian British writing is changing. 9 00:01:10,520 --> 00:01:16,850 How we see and read literature in English around Britain and do explore the websites. 10 00:01:16,850 --> 00:01:22,970 A wonderful website called Writers Make Worlds dot com, which provides a record and a resource in the area. 11 00:01:22,970 --> 00:01:27,500 There are few more related events in the next few months, including Renney at large. 12 00:01:27,500 --> 00:01:36,770 Speaking at the English faculty on the 14th of June, I have the pleasant duty of thanking the following parties for making this event possible. 13 00:01:36,770 --> 00:01:43,460 First of all, the lively English faculty postcolonial writing and theory seminar that runs fortnightly throughout the year. 14 00:01:43,460 --> 00:01:48,230 It's convened by L.A. and also by Professor Anche Mukerji. 15 00:01:48,230 --> 00:01:51,470 And this event is a special postcolonial seminar. 16 00:01:51,470 --> 00:01:59,990 And second, very many thanks to the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities known as Torch, who've helped very much with the organisation. 17 00:01:59,990 --> 00:02:07,250 I'm going to hand over to Dr Luisa Olofsson Lane to introduce our two speakers at the risk of over introducing. 18 00:02:07,250 --> 00:02:12,710 Just to tell you that Dr Lane completed her defeat here in the English faculty last summer and it 19 00:02:12,710 --> 00:02:18,710 focussed on the relationship between the aesthetics and politics in the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson. 20 00:02:18,710 --> 00:02:23,210 She's currently a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Oslo, 21 00:02:23,210 --> 00:02:26,960 and we're very proud to welcome her back to formally introduce our guests. 22 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:36,440 So I look forward as to all of you to listening and participating in this conversation. 23 00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:44,010 Yeah, I would like to say my own words are welcome to this special event that the English 24 00:02:44,010 --> 00:02:49,800 faculty and a torch and this is also part of the great writers inspired series. 25 00:02:49,800 --> 00:02:55,770 So we're also here to recognise Quincy Jones is a very important work. 26 00:02:55,770 --> 00:03:06,840 And also welcome to Paul Gilroy, a major scholar of the culture of the black Atlantic, has agreed to participate in this conversation. 27 00:03:06,840 --> 00:03:14,700 I also have to say that it's really nice to see you here in the place where I wrote my thesis and well about my thesis, 28 00:03:14,700 --> 00:03:20,460 I was asked quite often, how is it to write a thesis of the living poets and is really nice. 29 00:03:20,460 --> 00:03:24,420 So that's all I can say. Yeah. 30 00:03:24,420 --> 00:03:33,810 So the way this is going to run is that I'm going to introduce the speakers that I'm going to ask Clinton to read to kick up the conversation, 31 00:03:33,810 --> 00:03:37,050 and then I'm going to ask you both a general question. 32 00:03:37,050 --> 00:03:45,300 And from then on, Paul is going to lead the conversation with Lived-in and you're going to have read once more at the end, 33 00:03:45,300 --> 00:03:51,520 and then we're going to open up for questions and answers from the audience. 34 00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:59,080 So to introduce Lyndon Johnson is an acclaimed Jamaican born British poet and performer, 35 00:03:59,080 --> 00:04:07,060 he coined and popularised the term poetry, a form of performance based aural poetry inspired by reggae music. 36 00:04:07,060 --> 00:04:15,040 In 2002, he became the the the the second living poet published in the Penguin Modern Classics series, 37 00:04:15,040 --> 00:04:20,800 as well as having released several commercially successful and classic albums as a reggae artist, 38 00:04:20,800 --> 00:04:29,620 John speaks volumes of poetry include Voices of the Living and the Dead from 1970, four dead beats in blood from nineteen seventy five. 39 00:04:29,620 --> 00:04:37,790 And England is a bit from nineteen eighty. Paul Gilroy is a professor of American and English literature at King's College, London, 40 00:04:37,790 --> 00:04:47,210 a foundational figure in the field of Black Atlantic Studies and the world leading scholar in cultural studies and the music of the black diaspora. 41 00:04:47,210 --> 00:04:56,840 So. Linton, they want to maybe read for us. 42 00:04:56,840 --> 00:05:11,850 One afternoon, I've been to Oxford before, but it was so long ago, I can't remember when it was it was in the. 43 00:05:11,850 --> 00:05:20,320 Now, before that, The Onion, the Oxford Union, did something at the Oxford Union so many years ago, 44 00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:31,960 I'm very pleased to be here and I would like to say thank you to all those involved in organising this event and. 45 00:05:31,960 --> 00:05:41,710 I will begin, as I always do. Um. I want to read for about half an hour, is that all right? 46 00:05:41,710 --> 00:05:55,460 I'm going to begin with my first published poem, We Scalloway Idea is my school friend is sitting right there in the front. 47 00:05:55,460 --> 00:06:01,630 I don't know what he's doing in. 48 00:06:01,630 --> 00:06:12,580 My first poem that was published back in nineteen seventy three, a poem called Five Nights of Bleadon, which I wrote in nineteen seventy two. 49 00:06:12,580 --> 00:06:23,450 And. It's about. Knife crime. 50 00:06:23,450 --> 00:06:37,270 Five nights of bleeding for Leroy Harris. Madness, madness, madness, titan, the heads of the rebels, the bitterness erupts like a hot blast, 51 00:06:37,270 --> 00:06:45,920 broke glass rituals of blood on the burning serve by a cruel in fighting five nights of horror, 52 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:54,670 one of Bleadon ruthless cold blades as sharp as the eyes of hate on the Stubbins. 53 00:06:54,670 --> 00:07:10,520 It's OIR amongst the rebels madness, madness, oir night, no one was in Rixton Soprano B system was about to Notre Dame with the fire. 54 00:07:10,520 --> 00:07:13,220 Commando and his reggae reggae wire. 55 00:07:13,220 --> 00:07:26,430 It was a song shaking down your spinal column about me was tearing up your flesh and the rebels them start a fight in the you them just turn while. 56 00:07:26,430 --> 00:07:33,180 It's war amongst the rebels. Madness, madness, oi. 57 00:07:33,180 --> 00:07:38,430 Now, number two, down at Sheppards, right up Railton Road. 58 00:07:38,430 --> 00:07:48,150 It was a night Niam Friday when everyone was high on Broo or drew a pond or two watercolour. 59 00:07:48,150 --> 00:07:59,780 So and coming down near the king's music iron, the rhythm just bubbling under fire in raging and rising when suddenly the music caught. 60 00:07:59,780 --> 00:08:07,520 Steel blade, drinking blood and darkness. It's war amongst the rebels. 61 00:08:07,520 --> 00:08:16,830 Madness, madness now, knight, no tree over the river, right outside the rainbow. 62 00:08:16,830 --> 00:08:24,490 Inside, James Brown was screaming soul outside, the rebels were freezing cold. 63 00:08:24,490 --> 00:08:33,460 Babylonian tyrants descended Pownce Thunder brothers who were bold, so with the flick of their is a Japanese dub, 64 00:08:33,460 --> 00:08:45,660 the son of Blades was sounded the bite of a was vomited on two policemen, wounded, righteous, righteous war. 65 00:08:45,660 --> 00:08:57,030 Night number four at a blues dance, a blues dance, two rooms packed under pressure, pushing up hot, hot heads, 66 00:08:57,030 --> 00:09:04,290 rituals of blood in a blues dance broke glass splintering fire axes, blades, 67 00:09:04,290 --> 00:09:12,930 brain blast rebellion rushing down the wrong road, stumbling down the wrong tree. 68 00:09:12,930 --> 00:09:22,150 And Leroy bleeding to death on the fourth night in a blues dance on a black rebellious night. 69 00:09:22,150 --> 00:09:29,000 It's war amongst the rebels. Madness, madness, oi. 70 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:41,800 Night number five, the Telegraph Vengeance walked through the doors so slow, so smooth, so tight and ripe and smash. 71 00:09:41,800 --> 00:09:48,500 Broke glass, a bottle finds I head done the shell of the fire hurt KRUX. 72 00:09:48,500 --> 00:09:56,760 The victim feels fear, Fine's hands hold knife finds throat. 73 00:09:56,760 --> 00:10:09,980 Or the stabbings and the bleeding and the blood. It's soire amongst the rebels, muddiness, muddiness, oir. 74 00:10:09,980 --> 00:10:22,310 It was. Clear to me and my contemporaries when I was a youth youngster, that the police. 75 00:10:22,310 --> 00:10:27,540 At least the Metropolitan Police Force in London and declare war. 76 00:10:27,540 --> 00:10:39,210 Against the black youth of my generation. That war has been an ongoing one, it has been a protracted war. 77 00:10:39,210 --> 00:10:45,990 A significant section of the youth of my generation were criminalised by racist police 78 00:10:45,990 --> 00:10:56,980 officers under a law we knew in our communities as the SUS law society ensured for suspicion. 79 00:10:56,980 --> 00:11:03,870 Invariably, you would be arrested and charged with attempting to steal from persons unknown. 80 00:11:03,870 --> 00:11:08,310 Your alleged victim was never produced in court to give evidence against you. 81 00:11:08,310 --> 00:11:14,890 It was your word against the police officer. And in that way, um. 82 00:11:14,890 --> 00:11:20,300 As I said, a significant section of my contemporaries were criminalised. 83 00:11:20,300 --> 00:11:28,880 We had a campaign to get rid of this law due in the 1970s out of that campaign as a contribution to that campaign, 84 00:11:28,880 --> 00:11:38,810 I should say, I wrote this poem called Sunny's Letter. The writer of the letter is trying to explain to his mother. 85 00:11:38,810 --> 00:11:47,790 Was in the Caribbean somewhere where he finds himself incarcerated with his brother Sarnies letter. 86 00:11:47,790 --> 00:11:57,160 Brixton prison. Jebba Avenue. London sold west to England. 87 00:11:57,160 --> 00:12:07,590 Dear Mama, good day. I hope that when these few lines reach you, they may find you in the best of health. 88 00:12:07,590 --> 00:12:12,480 Mama. I really don't know how to tell you this. 89 00:12:12,480 --> 00:12:21,770 Karzai did make a solemn promise to take care, Jim, I'm trying my best to look out for him. 90 00:12:21,770 --> 00:12:33,120 Mama. I really did try my best. But nonetheless, Masaru Vitelli is a political gem guitarist. 91 00:12:33,120 --> 00:12:42,700 It was the middle of the rush hour when everybody does the hustle and bustle to go home for the evening shower, me and Jim stand up. 92 00:12:42,700 --> 00:12:52,010 We are in Barnabus not causing no fuss when Harlen asudden a police van pull up. 93 00:12:52,010 --> 00:13:05,630 Oh, Drumcree policemen who wear them carrying button, then walk straight up to me and Jim excuse me, one other Molen to Jim. 94 00:13:05,630 --> 00:13:08,910 So I'm taking him in. Jim, tell him to let go. 95 00:13:08,910 --> 00:13:15,530 I am not Norton and I'm not Ts, not even a button. 96 00:13:15,530 --> 00:13:21,840 The Jim start for Rega. The police got the Gigha. 97 00:13:21,840 --> 00:13:28,110 Mama Michot tell you what happened to Jim? Mama. 98 00:13:28,110 --> 00:13:34,620 Look, I tell you what happened to him, then pump him in the military and turn to jelly the family compound, 99 00:13:34,620 --> 00:13:41,070 embark on a trip, get pop music in him, head what it was like, let them kick him. 100 00:13:41,070 --> 00:13:49,670 Then it started to bleed. Mama, I just couldn't stand up there and do nothing. 101 00:13:49,670 --> 00:13:56,960 So them I started to cry Mitton Guantánamo Dunnam started to shout, mckewon Funimation, 102 00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:03,870 Unnim started to spin Tump Funimation on him dropped by not been on Krush. 103 00:14:03,870 --> 00:14:08,910 And did. Mama. 104 00:14:08,910 --> 00:14:18,700 More policemen come down and beat me to the grong them charge Jim FISAs. 105 00:14:18,700 --> 00:14:24,030 Them charge me for murder. Mama. 106 00:14:24,030 --> 00:14:29,140 Go for it, don't get depressed on donated. 107 00:14:29,140 --> 00:14:33,430 Be of good courage till I hear from you. 108 00:14:33,430 --> 00:14:47,800 I remain. Your son, Soni. Thank you, I'm not. 109 00:14:47,800 --> 00:15:01,500 I'm not done yet. My. 110 00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:14,410 I was fortunate as a as a youngster in the Black Panther movement. 111 00:15:14,410 --> 00:15:24,200 I discovered. Something called black literature, because as a schoolboy's, as a schoolboy, 112 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:34,730 I had no idea that black people wrote books because there was nothing on the school curriculum that gave me that idea. 113 00:15:34,730 --> 00:15:44,870 And in the Black Panthers, we had a library and I discovered a book called The Souls of Black Folk by WBB Dubois. 114 00:15:44,870 --> 00:15:55,060 And that is what inspired me to try and express how I felt about. 115 00:15:55,060 --> 00:16:03,440 The situation of my contemporaries growing up in a racially hostile environment, I was fortunate. 116 00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:13,760 To have as my mentors. Two remarkable men from the Caribbean, the Jamaican novelist, 117 00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:24,290 poet and broadcaster Anja Salkey and the Trinidadian publisher, poet and political activist John Leros, 118 00:16:24,290 --> 00:16:27,830 John Taylor was co-founded New Beacon Books, 119 00:16:27,830 --> 00:16:38,780 which was the first black publishing house in this country and bookseller established in nineteen sixty six. 120 00:16:38,780 --> 00:16:49,390 And he also co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement alongside Andrea Salkin and the Barbadian poet Kamal Bethwaite. 121 00:16:49,390 --> 00:17:10,290 John. Excuse me. John always used to like always used to talk about the so-called Windrush generation, the first generation of Caribbean migrants. 122 00:17:10,290 --> 00:17:17,500 As the heroic generation and you call them the heroic generation because of what they were. 123 00:17:17,500 --> 00:17:25,990 Able to achieve in spite of the racial hostility that confronted them. 124 00:17:25,990 --> 00:17:33,620 Well. I belong to the second generation. 125 00:17:33,620 --> 00:17:43,610 And we were a generation. We were not willing to tolerate the things our parents reluctantly tolerated. 126 00:17:43,610 --> 00:17:53,530 In fact, we rebelled. And I think through our rebellion, we've helped to change this country a little bit for the better. 127 00:17:53,530 --> 00:18:01,180 And this is a poem about a section of that generation to which I belong, 128 00:18:01,180 --> 00:18:11,800 is it not funny people saying this, people saying that that you would have to the them carrying on our. 129 00:18:11,800 --> 00:18:24,010 And it's no fun. It's not funny, then we take a chance to get a look at them with tech giants filled with topower world, with tech giants, Filiberto, 130 00:18:24,010 --> 00:18:29,330 it stein them with tech giants, they've got jump on them with tech giants, 131 00:18:29,330 --> 00:18:36,410 Undem love blues, dance them with tech giants, and then don't call it the curse. 132 00:18:36,410 --> 00:18:43,600 People saying this, people say that boat you would have to today owe them cause enough for you. 133 00:18:43,600 --> 00:18:53,720 And know funny. It's not funny, then we take a chance on them, love are us, then we take a chance, then we skip them class, 134 00:18:53,720 --> 00:19:01,640 then we take a chance to go Papadakis Tyldum with tech giants them do it all the while, then with tech johns. 135 00:19:01,640 --> 00:19:07,790 What some of them lost them with tech giants and them don't count the cars. 136 00:19:07,790 --> 00:19:15,460 People saying this, people saying that you would have to the boat that we had them steer. 137 00:19:15,460 --> 00:19:23,480 No, in. It's not funny them with tech jobs, forget to call them with tech jobs, 138 00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:29,810 with your little sister Ssali, them with tech jobs for them, feel them, force them with tech jobs. 139 00:19:29,810 --> 00:19:36,560 But they've got no cause them with tech jobs. But there is not advance them with tech jobs on them. 140 00:19:36,560 --> 00:19:47,060 Don't count because people saying this, people saying that both the youth of today or them really steer. 141 00:19:47,060 --> 00:19:54,820 No, funny. Nossa. It's not funny. 142 00:19:54,820 --> 00:19:59,930 I saw Paul. With this book, my very. 143 00:19:59,930 --> 00:20:10,970 Old old book Dread Beaten Blood, which was published in 1974, and it suddenly occurred to me that there's a poem that I have never read. 144 00:20:10,970 --> 00:20:23,420 I haven't read for about 30 odd years. And I was looking through the contents of my selected poems and I thought, why isn't this poem in this book? 145 00:20:23,420 --> 00:20:29,360 You know, then I looked in this other book, Things and Times, and it wasn't there either. 146 00:20:29,360 --> 00:20:34,550 And then I saw Paul with this. I don't know what he doing with it. 147 00:20:34,550 --> 00:20:42,040 And I thought, oh, I'm going to try out that poem because it's one of my earliest poems. 148 00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:51,470 And again, it deals with the team, the theme of knife crime and a lot of other things down the road. 149 00:20:51,470 --> 00:20:57,650 Heavy, heavy terror on the rampage or don't you worry, it is so near. 150 00:20:57,650 --> 00:21:09,360 Fratricide is only the first phase. I wrote this poem when I was reading Franz Fanon, so of Friends for Non Influence. 151 00:21:09,360 --> 00:21:22,250 For him. Yes, the violence of the oppressed are running while then picking up with you, them fish sauce, poetry, 152 00:21:22,250 --> 00:21:31,940 prophesying a black, a black, a black conquest on the national front is on the rampage, making firebombs the burn. 153 00:21:31,940 --> 00:21:40,580 We terrified a terrifying creature such as suffering with suffering in this burning age of rage, 154 00:21:40,580 --> 00:21:47,060 no place to run to get gone, and the violence numbing up inside. 155 00:21:47,060 --> 00:21:53,390 So in the heat of the anguish, you just turn your turn on your brother and your little Emmanuela Qimonda. 156 00:21:53,390 --> 00:22:03,140 Stubborn man. You'll kill him. And the violence dummying up inside all that history should take such a rough root cause enough. 157 00:22:03,140 --> 00:22:07,880 This bitterness and pain on the way is a room full of [INAUDIBLE]. 158 00:22:07,880 --> 00:22:18,950 You can't walk out. Fratricide is only the first phase with brother fighting, brother stabbing, brother them just killing off them one another. 159 00:22:18,950 --> 00:22:23,480 But when you see your brother, blood just flow futile fighting, 160 00:22:23,480 --> 00:22:31,220 then you know that the first phase must come to an end and time for the second phase to show. 161 00:22:31,220 --> 00:22:51,680 I wrote that way back in the early 1970s. So in his letter, OK, I'm going to go into the it is now. 162 00:22:51,680 --> 00:23:00,690 Um, in January. The 17th of January, 1981. 163 00:23:00,690 --> 00:23:10,560 Yvonne Ruddock was celebrating her 16th birthday at four three nine across the road in southeast London when some racist, 164 00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:15,630 some fascist through an incendiary device through the window of the house, 165 00:23:15,630 --> 00:23:24,140 which resulted in a fire in which 13 young black people died and twenty six were seriously injured. 166 00:23:24,140 --> 00:23:30,920 It was the police themselves who informed Mrs. Ruddock that it was an arson attack. 167 00:23:30,920 --> 00:23:36,140 Those kind of arson attacks were not rare. 168 00:23:36,140 --> 00:23:49,380 In fact, they've been going on they've been going on for a long time. 169 00:23:49,380 --> 00:23:55,610 In nineteen seventy one, there was a similar arson attack on a West Indian Party. 170 00:23:55,610 --> 00:24:00,230 Um. A lot of people were badly burned. 171 00:24:00,230 --> 00:24:07,310 No one died in that fire. Someone was arrested and prosecuted by the police. 172 00:24:07,310 --> 00:24:14,950 In the case of the new CROSSFIRE or the new cross massacre, as we call it. 173 00:24:14,950 --> 00:24:21,710 The police did everything they could. To cover it up. 174 00:24:21,710 --> 00:24:29,920 It was I think it was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of policing in this country. 175 00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:35,860 You know, I saw on the news the other day they were talking about having a Stephen Lawrence Day every year, 176 00:24:35,860 --> 00:24:43,490 the 22nd of April, there should be a new cross massacre or a new CROSSFIRE day. 177 00:24:43,490 --> 00:24:52,760 When the fire occurred, there were no messages of condolence from the prime minister. 178 00:24:52,760 --> 00:25:02,640 No messages of condolence from the queen. And instead of trying to find the people or the person responsible for the fire, 179 00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:08,490 the police use their resources to discredit those of us in the black communities 180 00:25:08,490 --> 00:25:15,840 who form the new Cross Musika Action Committee to do something about it. 181 00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:28,670 The inquest was held with indecent haste within three months of the fire before the police had completed their so-called investigation. 182 00:25:28,670 --> 00:25:44,410 Commander Stockwell was in charge of it. He got promoted to some big posts in Hong Kong is done such a very good job of suppressing the facts. 183 00:25:44,410 --> 00:25:53,990 The new cost Musika Action Committee. Mobilised our communities. 184 00:25:53,990 --> 00:26:00,980 And on the 2nd of March nineteen eighty one, we mobilised fifteen thousand people. 185 00:26:00,980 --> 00:26:02,870 It was a national mobilisation. 186 00:26:02,870 --> 00:26:13,350 We mobilised fifteen thousand people and we marched to Hyde Park to protest the death of those young people and to demand justice. 187 00:26:13,350 --> 00:26:15,810 There was an early day motion in the House of Commons, 188 00:26:15,810 --> 00:26:24,030 I can't remember which member of parliament and the letter was handed to Number 10 Downing Street. 189 00:26:24,030 --> 00:26:32,220 Demanding justice, that was the Black People's Day of Action the 2nd of March 1981, 190 00:26:32,220 --> 00:26:36,590 there was nothing like that ever seen before or since, for that matter. 191 00:26:36,590 --> 00:26:45,640 And it was a watershed moment. Because it made those in authority take note of the fact that black people in this 192 00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:53,910 country had some power and we could mobilise that power if and when we had to. 193 00:26:53,910 --> 00:27:08,150 In April of that year, 1981. The police in Rixton, where I'm from, my neighbourhood, launched an operation called Operation Swamp One. 194 00:27:08,150 --> 00:27:17,080 Where they went about stopping and search and harassing and intimidating black people, going about their everyday lawful business. 195 00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:26,470 Well, a lot of bitterness had been building up over the years and we'd had a number of small scale riots, 196 00:27:26,470 --> 00:27:31,090 most the biggest one was at the Notting Hill Carnival in nineteen seventy seven. 197 00:27:31,090 --> 00:27:47,670 Seventy six. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and we had a huge uprising, riot, insurrection and. 198 00:27:47,670 --> 00:28:02,050 It spread to every major inner city area in this country, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, all over the country. 199 00:28:02,050 --> 00:28:08,450 Let me just recite the poem. There's too many things I could tell you about that. 200 00:28:08,450 --> 00:28:16,150 I wrote a poem recording that historic moment. 201 00:28:16,150 --> 00:28:30,980 Called the Great Insurrection. It was in April, nineteen eighty one going into the ghetto of Brixton, 202 00:28:30,980 --> 00:28:39,620 that the bubble Undem caused such a friction that it bring about a great insurrection and it spread all over the nation. 203 00:28:39,620 --> 00:28:45,770 It was truly an historical occasion. It was event of the year and I wish I had been there. 204 00:28:45,770 --> 00:28:54,020 When we're running right outside of our Brixton, when we're much up in the police van, when we mash up the wicked one plan, 205 00:28:54,020 --> 00:29:03,230 when we mash up the swamp at the one figure to make them understand that we're not on more of them oppression. 206 00:29:03,230 --> 00:29:14,960 And when they get the grapevine to find out all I could find everybody just revel in the story that my talk about the power and the glory, 207 00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:21,110 that my talk about the burning and the looting them. I talk about the smashing and the grub in them. 208 00:29:21,110 --> 00:29:26,460 I tell them about the vanquished and the victory inside the bubble and then went too far. 209 00:29:26,460 --> 00:29:32,330 So we had was born to care and went on to get married. 210 00:29:32,330 --> 00:29:36,320 But what now? So it goes some time in our star now. 211 00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:42,860 So it goes some time in our themselves. Burrendong the judgement call upon the landlord with Bundalong. 212 00:29:42,860 --> 00:29:50,030 The judge will never be the landlord when we run riot all of our Brixton when we must plan to police vun. 213 00:29:50,030 --> 00:29:52,850 When we mash up the wicked one plan. 214 00:29:52,850 --> 00:30:01,520 When we mash up this one, the one themselves we commandeer on ammunition with bill, we buy a kid and we could get Jefferey. 215 00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:10,140 It was said no to a scout figure. Find them. We are about then we've come up with Puzey on McQueary and we'll know them. 216 00:30:10,140 --> 00:30:19,210 One gang or plan go into action. What the plastic bullets and the water cannon will bring up them will bring up never mind. 217 00:30:19,210 --> 00:30:23,810 Scarman will bring up dumdum. 218 00:30:23,810 --> 00:30:36,470 Scarman, of course, was Lord Scarman, who was appointed to conduct an enquiry into the circumstances or the causes of the uprisings. 219 00:30:36,470 --> 00:30:45,730 But, you know. Looking back on those days, I'm thinking, I think to myself sometimes, my God. 220 00:30:45,730 --> 00:30:51,910 We came here from the British colonies as British colonial subjects, 221 00:30:51,910 --> 00:31:09,700 and we had to resort to riots and insurrections and uprisings simply in order to integrate ourselves into British society. 222 00:31:09,700 --> 00:31:15,640 Um. Windrush. 223 00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:30,170 The Empire Windrush, the Windrush generation and all that, this is a poem, a stocktaking poem about the post Windrush generations. 224 00:31:30,170 --> 00:31:36,980 It really is asking the question, really basically asking the question, how far? 225 00:31:36,980 --> 00:31:52,990 Of whitcome. Since the days of the Windrush early days of migration, how far have we come in our struggle for racial equality and for social justice? 226 00:31:52,990 --> 00:32:02,090 Things and times don't. Doped, demoralised. 227 00:32:02,090 --> 00:32:08,740 This kid did. Traumatised. 228 00:32:08,740 --> 00:32:15,670 Blinded by resplendent light of love, dazzled by the firmament of freedom, 229 00:32:15,670 --> 00:32:23,340 you couldn't detect the sea when it kicking in m. teeth, it couldn't cry corruption and believe in Amun. 230 00:32:23,340 --> 00:32:27,960 You never know about Cleek did Home-building did make it, you never know. 231 00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:36,240 Intrigue, never in the league. It never did understand that on the road to socialism, you could back up nepotism and wife. 232 00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:42,700 Dangerous, inbred, treacherous, unimposing, very vicious. 233 00:32:42,700 --> 00:32:49,520 Duped. Daubert. Demoralised. 234 00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:57,730 This is the. This is the. Traumatised. 235 00:32:57,730 --> 00:33:05,260 No, like a fragile fragment of light trapped in the belly of the dark night, like a blind man, 236 00:33:05,260 --> 00:33:15,290 stupefied and dazed, last stand alone in a mystical me as the doors open, doors open, doors, open doors. 237 00:33:15,290 --> 00:33:26,660 Watch him drifting across the ocean of life without an rudder hung on RCL Phidias, open doors, open doors, open doors, call him flushed. 238 00:33:26,660 --> 00:33:32,930 Some of the tides of the times, if you like, lost in the labyrinth of life. 239 00:33:32,930 --> 00:33:37,990 If you like. Duped. 240 00:33:37,990 --> 00:33:44,310 Duop. Demoralised. This is. 241 00:33:44,310 --> 00:33:58,190 This is. Paralysed. Shipwreck against the sounds of the tides of the times meditating the about all these fears don't pan the gleaming sea shore. 242 00:33:58,190 --> 00:34:11,400 Not so certain. Not so sure like before. The ADC, Bundy's son, I would give it back. 243 00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:20,310 If it could cry the soul, not the surge that you see on with the sweet bamboo trees and membranes, 244 00:34:20,310 --> 00:34:29,460 just Artecoll cannot touch no overnight like them desperate deeds of defiance when young rebels did a fight against oppression, 245 00:34:29,460 --> 00:34:33,660 when young rebels did a fleeing firebomb, when they march with them. 246 00:34:33,660 --> 00:34:39,510 Banas rheostat. Chanting Freedom. Chanting justice. 247 00:34:39,510 --> 00:34:45,960 Chanting blood on fire. When a crucial trial was I believe is. 248 00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:54,560 Taking the struggle to a higher stage. Duped, duped. 249 00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:59,590 Demoralised. This it. 250 00:34:59,590 --> 00:35:03,510 Dónde? Paralysed. 251 00:35:03,510 --> 00:35:16,540 No wash up, wear top, mash up, Emrys up, catch up and sit up with him on image your head lying down I can see consider how young rebels get all. 252 00:35:16,540 --> 00:35:25,770 Oh some sell them suel some get left out in the corner, some get Olivia, some get depreciate, some turn middle class, some again. 253 00:35:25,770 --> 00:35:34,890 There is just so much try to live clean, some get vicious and mean, some plague with goat, some still I toss it out one on to a fight. 254 00:35:34,890 --> 00:35:48,340 The struggle in them head lead a little less S.A.M. to win the revolution in them had Yamen Allerton Prime Minister in them had. 255 00:35:48,340 --> 00:35:54,710 Duped. About. Demoralised. 256 00:35:54,710 --> 00:36:00,990 This is the. Traumatised. 257 00:36:00,990 --> 00:36:08,460 No wonder in pondering, considering pausing all kind of riddle to himself, like. 258 00:36:08,460 --> 00:36:16,420 No doubt will come out of the one room them. OnTime unfortune been some of her friends know that we got bitcoins, 259 00:36:16,420 --> 00:36:26,540 the flat and with decided with that we're colour TV and the mud can no doubt recreate some Speace and no one else. 260 00:36:26,540 --> 00:36:35,750 Please note that we got. No doubt we got MP and GOP duck spun the radio bloc, 261 00:36:35,750 --> 00:36:47,840 spun TV with Sir Unwieldly m b e I forgot we forgot our not do we need another Moses paetec 262 00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:57,470 across the sea and said one Whitecross when a free free as we enter the 21st century. 263 00:36:57,470 --> 00:37:08,920 Ah, we're long past the era that the stage is each and every one who authorised no to meet the dawning of a different age. 264 00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:16,430 Well, it was wanderin pondering, considering when you hear a voice like the wind say. 265 00:37:16,430 --> 00:37:24,870 To adjust things on times one dozen signs, but not get Mistick be realistic. 266 00:37:24,870 --> 00:37:29,380 And your next voice, like the sea, sir. 267 00:37:29,380 --> 00:38:01,720 Sometimes the pungent odour of the key signals that run your life upon the way you want to do some talking now. 268 00:38:01,720 --> 00:38:11,080 Yeah, so, um, before I just let you lead the conversation between you two, I have a question for both of you. 269 00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:14,950 Um, you already said, uh, 270 00:38:14,950 --> 00:38:24,220 spoke about sort of being a part of a generation and the Windrush generation versus the post Windrush generations and kind of different experiences. 271 00:38:24,220 --> 00:38:29,560 I kind of wonder, do you to consider yourself a part of the same generation? 272 00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:39,730 And can you say a bit more about, like, how your thinking and my thing has been shaped by being a part of a particular generation? 273 00:38:39,730 --> 00:38:47,980 Right. Yeah. OK, what do you want to go. Are you going. Well, I was inside the rainbow on boy. 274 00:38:47,980 --> 00:38:53,210 I was I was inside the rainbow that. 275 00:38:53,210 --> 00:38:58,480 No, it's on. OK, how do you turn it off. 276 00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,930 OK. So I thought I was inside the rainbow that night. 277 00:39:02,930 --> 00:39:07,460 And came out and the glass was broken, the blood was all over the pavement, 278 00:39:07,460 --> 00:39:16,320 so I would think we were in the same generation, although it's a little bit older than. 279 00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:26,130 So but I remember that the reason I say why I got that book still and I'm not I'm not you know, 280 00:39:26,130 --> 00:39:30,960 I'm not prostrating myself or anything, but that book changed my life. 281 00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:36,660 I have to say it changed my life. And I went to the bookshop and I bought that book immediately, 282 00:39:36,660 --> 00:39:45,990 was published and I opened it and I saw some I learnt something historical about myself, my experience, those of my friends. 283 00:39:45,990 --> 00:39:51,960 And I looked on the page and it said, the mighty poet I Roy was on the words. 284 00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:56,310 And that for me was just one. There are things like that in that book. 285 00:39:56,310 --> 00:40:01,830 And it released something in me that enabled me to understand my situation better. 286 00:40:01,830 --> 00:40:09,180 And so, yeah, I would say we were part of the same at the same moment because we we had to deal with the same forces. 287 00:40:09,180 --> 00:40:14,940 We we you know, we ran from the police, we fought the police who were chase. 288 00:40:14,940 --> 00:40:22,200 We ran for our lives. You know, obviously, Linton's already mentioned the. 289 00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:30,560 The. New cross, the black representation of 1981 is again a very formative moment, 290 00:40:30,560 --> 00:40:36,230 very important moment for this country and for all of us in our generation. 291 00:40:36,230 --> 00:40:42,980 And I think I you say you didn't know the black people wrote books. 292 00:40:42,980 --> 00:40:46,520 I mean, I'm sort of interested in how I did because my mom was a writer. 293 00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:53,350 So I knew that that was going on. And Warmsley used to used to ring up and most of my mother's editors. 294 00:40:53,350 --> 00:40:57,950 So I used to answer the phone to and so I knew there was something going on. 295 00:40:57,950 --> 00:41:03,950 And I feel that what's interesting about the generational question for me is how we fill in the space 296 00:41:03,950 --> 00:41:13,700 between the Caribbean artist movement and the and the and the generational voice that you present, 297 00:41:13,700 --> 00:41:20,150 actually. And there is a story there because you mentioned Andrew selkies importance, for example. 298 00:41:20,150 --> 00:41:31,640 And of course, Andrew Salkey is the one who writes the food to this book, just as Bongo Jerry is the one who supplies the epigraph to this book. 299 00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:37,220 So I think we are part of a generation, but it's a generation that lives its life politically, 300 00:41:37,220 --> 00:41:40,160 culturally, historically in relation to what went before. 301 00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:50,760 And I think that distinction between the heroic generation and the rebel generation captures that switch for me. 302 00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:56,550 I forgot. I've forgotten the question. Now what? 303 00:41:56,550 --> 00:42:05,220 Same generation, same same generation, I always saw myself as being a part of the second generation because, 304 00:42:05,220 --> 00:42:10,830 you know, I came here as a boy in 1963 at the age of 11. 305 00:42:10,830 --> 00:42:18,240 And so my my parents were first generation, even though we came within three years of each other. 306 00:42:18,240 --> 00:42:29,980 You know, I always see them as the first generation and my my generation of the second generation and. 307 00:42:29,980 --> 00:42:37,360 I don't want to give the impression that the heroic generation that's the so-called Windrush generation 308 00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:44,920 were passive because they weren't they did what they could to combat racism in their own way, 309 00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:51,730 but they they were limited in what they could do because they had responsibilities. 310 00:42:51,730 --> 00:43:02,320 You know, they had families to look after and they had considerations about sending money to their families in the Caribbean. 311 00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:04,630 But they did what they could. 312 00:43:04,630 --> 00:43:18,100 I mean, during the Notting Hill riots of 1958 and the Nottingham riots of nineteen fifty nine, they fought physically, fought the fascists. 313 00:43:18,100 --> 00:43:24,940 And they. Build organisations. 314 00:43:24,940 --> 00:43:33,460 Like the West Indian and West Indian Standard Conference conferences that was called West Indian Stand Conference, but, 315 00:43:33,460 --> 00:43:46,210 you know, my generation, we kind of felt that there were organisations like the West Indian Standing Conference where were. 316 00:43:46,210 --> 00:43:54,370 Not exactly Uncle Tommy show, but, you know, this kind of cap in hand appealing to authorities, 317 00:43:54,370 --> 00:44:04,840 I don't think we we our solution was to organise, organise, agitate and organise. 318 00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:11,190 And that's precisely what we did. We built autonomous organisations like the Black Panther movement, like the black community, 319 00:44:11,190 --> 00:44:16,720 the Freedom Party and other organisations up and down the country. 320 00:44:16,720 --> 00:44:22,660 And back in those days, we were influenced by the black power movement in the United States. 321 00:44:22,660 --> 00:44:28,570 And our slogan like their slogan was Black Power, People's Power. 322 00:44:28,570 --> 00:44:34,240 We weren't separatists. We weren't black nationalists. 323 00:44:34,240 --> 00:44:44,740 Personally speaking, in the black in the Black Panthers, our people, the ideas of people like CNR James were very important. 324 00:44:44,740 --> 00:44:51,790 We studied the Black Jacobins, we studied Eric Williams is capitalism and slavery. 325 00:44:51,790 --> 00:44:57,940 We studied EBP, Thomsons, the making of the English working class and so on. 326 00:44:57,940 --> 00:45:02,800 But my generation was, let's put it this way, 327 00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:10,960 unfettered in the way that my parents weren't because we had we didn't have the kind of considerations that our 328 00:45:10,960 --> 00:45:17,620 parents had because you couldn't simply down your tools or walk off a job every time you were racially abused. 329 00:45:17,620 --> 00:45:25,000 And a lot of that was going on at the time and they had to put up with a lot of things. 330 00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:32,500 I think one thing that distinguishes us is that I was born here and you came here as a child. 331 00:45:32,500 --> 00:45:37,870 And I think that if you want to look at the history of the movement in a detail, 332 00:45:37,870 --> 00:45:44,620 that becomes something that you can read off the surface of what transpired. 333 00:45:44,620 --> 00:45:50,860 I was I was thinking also about that generation and about. 334 00:45:50,860 --> 00:46:05,960 About the characteristics of that generation that your poetry points to, and that is that the rebel generation has in a sense. 335 00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:14,630 A whole explosion of musical and literary activism across the Atlantic, well, in Jamaica, 336 00:46:14,630 --> 00:46:19,580 of course, there's that incredible 10 year period from 1971 through to 1980. 337 00:46:19,580 --> 00:46:26,940 But the period that gives us reggae, actually, because it's blue beat, it's other things before that, ska is before that. 338 00:46:26,940 --> 00:46:28,820 So reggae is there. 339 00:46:28,820 --> 00:46:40,090 And then, of course, an amazing fertility and amazing richness of musical culture that travels all across with soul and with jazz as well. 340 00:46:40,090 --> 00:46:41,960 This extraordinary musical fertility, 341 00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:51,410 which feeds a kind of self-consciousness in that generation in the blues dance and beyond date with pirate radio, 342 00:46:51,410 --> 00:46:57,140 with a whole a whole repertory things in in every club, its room, in every shop. 343 00:46:57,140 --> 00:47:00,800 London used to be populated with with record shops. 344 00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:04,400 And they weren't just places of consuming things. 345 00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:09,110 They were places of education, places of a kind of hidden, 346 00:47:09,110 --> 00:47:18,830 almost public world where people would pass on information and make a community lots of other other instances, other examples that we could point to. 347 00:47:18,830 --> 00:47:25,890 But the record shop is one that is very dear to me because I wasted so much time inside them and they were like where they were. 348 00:47:25,890 --> 00:47:27,680 They were like little churches. 349 00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:36,800 I would say there's a certain quality of reverence and spiritual nourishment which is also transacted in that relationship with sound. 350 00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:41,600 So I think that this rebel generation draws on that incredible creative 351 00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:46,850 explosion in the music during the same period when reggae reggae music was very, 352 00:47:46,850 --> 00:47:53,450 very important in my formation as a poet. 353 00:47:53,450 --> 00:48:00,060 I mean, I didn't I didn't set out to become a reggae recording artist. 354 00:48:00,060 --> 00:48:08,450 Reggae, whenever I was writing reggae, kept on creeping into my verse in terms of the bass lines. 355 00:48:08,450 --> 00:48:15,200 And I was very much influenced by dub music, which was a mix long form of reggae, 356 00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:23,930 just the drummer and the bass, which was the vehicle for the Jamaican reggae deejays like the mighty IRA. 357 00:48:23,930 --> 00:48:30,050 You mentioned Big Youth, you, Roy and others. 358 00:48:30,050 --> 00:48:34,400 And that kind of pointed me in the direction I wanted to go. 359 00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:43,610 I mean, of course, I was listening to stuff, but the last voice of America as well, who were doing reciting African American poetry, 360 00:48:43,610 --> 00:48:53,150 using the everyday spoken language of African Americans as a as a valid vehicle for poetic discourse. 361 00:48:53,150 --> 00:49:04,940 And so reggae was crucial in my formation, not only in terms of influencing the kind of verse that I ended up writing, 362 00:49:04,940 --> 00:49:25,810 but in terms of my identity, because reggae music was the nexus, if you like, of a subculture of resistance and you know. 363 00:49:25,810 --> 00:49:36,820 Moreover, it acted as a kind of an umbilical cord that kept us connected to Jamaica, the Jamaica that we had left behind. 364 00:49:36,820 --> 00:49:41,920 Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting that you say that because, I mean, 365 00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:46,750 I'm not trying to turn you back from a poet into a sociologist or anything like that. 366 00:49:46,750 --> 00:49:52,810 But obviously, in 1976, when you published that piece on Jamaican rebel music in race and class, 367 00:49:52,810 --> 00:49:57,490 that was another light bulb moment for me because I had never seen anything like that. 368 00:49:57,490 --> 00:50:04,660 I didn't think anyone had written anything like that before. So whatever you feel about its limitations, it was a landmark publication. 369 00:50:04,660 --> 00:50:10,570 And people still now they still turn to it or really to look for elements of history. 370 00:50:10,570 --> 00:50:12,250 They do. Yes, they do. 371 00:50:12,250 --> 00:50:22,240 And I know that there are other people who are also actually poets in some cases whose work is not remembered, like, for example, Sebastian Clark, 372 00:50:22,240 --> 00:50:32,380 a.k.a. Amon Stabat Sakinah, who was writing poetry, I think, but also ended up writing that first book about about reggae Hineman published. 373 00:50:32,380 --> 00:50:39,430 So I think one thing we can do here is to try and recover the richness of that cultural moment, 374 00:50:39,430 --> 00:50:45,370 because it's almost as though there's calm and then there's later on Creation for Liberation and the book fair. 375 00:50:45,370 --> 00:50:47,590 But there's a sort of space in between. 376 00:50:47,590 --> 00:50:56,650 When I first heard of you before I found your book in the bookshop, it was around because I was working close to where the Cassidy Centre was. 377 00:50:56,650 --> 00:51:02,470 I used to work and used to work there. And so you're a bit of a local legend through your work as a librarian? 378 00:51:02,470 --> 00:51:06,850 I think in that sense. I mean, maybe people, especially younger people, 379 00:51:06,850 --> 00:51:10,870 don't know that there was ever such a place as the Cascadia Centre that it played 380 00:51:10,870 --> 00:51:15,460 a role in your development as a poet in the literary and cultural life of London. 381 00:51:15,460 --> 00:51:23,320 And to, you know, kids like myself, this was a very rich opportunity to hear the culture live, 382 00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:30,240 where the Cascadia cascade was one of the first places that I was able to. 383 00:51:30,240 --> 00:51:37,950 Recite my poems, because before that, I used to recite my poems at the local youth club and, you know, 384 00:51:37,950 --> 00:51:47,730 back in them in those days, if you had an audience of like 15 people, it was like a huge audience, you know, and I would recite. 385 00:51:47,730 --> 00:51:54,700 So when I left university, by the way, that paper. 386 00:51:54,700 --> 00:52:04,330 What's it called again? I don't rebel rebel music, Jamaican well, yeah, that came out of my dissertation. 387 00:52:04,330 --> 00:52:12,760 I did for my sociology degree. You know, when I was a student, I was a reggae collector and I was a student of reggae music. 388 00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:20,650 The Cascadia Centre was an important cultural centre for black people in London. 389 00:52:20,650 --> 00:52:25,720 It was unique insofar as everything happened there. There were poetry readings. 390 00:52:25,720 --> 00:52:31,600 It was the it was the home of black theatre in England. 391 00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:44,330 All the theatrical productions went on there. We had novels, people reading from the novels and poetry. 392 00:52:44,330 --> 00:52:50,480 Talks, lectures, it was a youth club going on downstairs, 393 00:52:50,480 --> 00:53:01,910 it was a place for artists like Emmanuel Jugada the sculptor and painter, people like Ara Lloyd, another painter. 394 00:53:01,910 --> 00:53:11,840 And I can you imagine me as a young aspiring poet being in the presence of these great people from the Caribbean, 395 00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:17,420 these writers, you know, like George Lumin, the barbarian novelists. 396 00:53:17,420 --> 00:53:22,100 I remember I think it must have been about nineteen seventy three. 397 00:53:22,100 --> 00:53:30,770 I was trying out some of the early poems from Drumbeating and. 398 00:53:30,770 --> 00:53:40,110 I was, you know. George Lemon was right in front of me, and he was he was like this. 399 00:53:40,110 --> 00:53:48,420 So I was like, oh, my God, he doesn't like my stuff, so I said to him, just like I said, Uncle George don't like my point. 400 00:53:48,420 --> 00:53:54,600 You said, No, man, he's just concentrating. Well, it was amazing, you know, 401 00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:58,890 and I I feel privileged to have been a part of that because the Caribbean 402 00:53:58,890 --> 00:54:04,200 artist movement used to hold some of its activities that the Cascadia Centre, 403 00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:15,390 another base for the Caribbean artist movement, was the West Indian Student Centre in Earls Court, West London. 404 00:54:15,390 --> 00:54:23,650 And as I said, I feel really privileged not only to have had mentors like John Leros. 405 00:54:23,650 --> 00:54:32,110 And understand, um, but to have been part of the the dying moments of the Caribbean artist movement. 406 00:54:32,110 --> 00:54:43,510 Um, yeah. And actually alongside those hidden spaces for performance and conversation, there's also a print culture, too. 407 00:54:43,510 --> 00:54:51,460 I mean, I was going to ask you where you are. I remember seeing a poem of yours in the Black Liberator, actually, right now. 408 00:54:51,460 --> 00:54:56,230 But where where is the first place you had the poems printed? 409 00:54:56,230 --> 00:55:03,430 Do you remember where that was? The first poem I ever had published was in 1973, and it was in Restrainers in Macedonia. 410 00:55:03,430 --> 00:55:09,130 That was when Restudy the magazine. Rastetter was part of the Institute of Race Relations. 411 00:55:09,130 --> 00:55:17,200 But of course. With the connivance of LaRue's, Darcus, 412 00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:24,220 Howe and other and some other people raised to the magazine was hijacked from the Institute of 413 00:55:24,220 --> 00:55:33,730 Race Relations and brought to Rixton and set up as an independent journal for the black community. 414 00:55:33,730 --> 00:55:38,770 An international journal put an international focus. What? 415 00:55:38,770 --> 00:55:46,400 Yeah, and Jamaican wrote the music. It was published in Race and Class and. 416 00:55:46,400 --> 00:55:54,260 I don't know how I met Ricky Cambridge. 417 00:55:54,260 --> 00:56:08,810 Cecil got Moore and Colin, Colin Prescott, these are the guys who was running this magazine, this journal called The Black Liberator, 418 00:56:08,810 --> 00:56:20,450 and they kindly published another version of that Jamaican rebel music called The Politics of Reggae Lyricism, 419 00:56:20,450 --> 00:56:32,090 which was like a kind of close reading of of of of the lyrics of the lyricism of the time. 420 00:56:32,090 --> 00:56:41,300 But to be honest with you, Paul, I found that journal unintelligible because it was all this kind of structuralism, 421 00:56:41,300 --> 00:56:50,570 Marxist structuralism, although I can't even remember the name of the series, the most of it that I couldn't cope with. 422 00:56:50,570 --> 00:57:00,560 But it was a good looking magazine because they used to publish photographs of people like Lance Watson and other poets as well, 423 00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:09,470 whose work they said they interspersed the overdoses of Maoist theory, mostly mastery with with they lighten the load Maoist Maoists. 424 00:57:09,470 --> 00:57:14,750 Yeah. Yeah. People thought it was cool. Yeah. 425 00:57:14,750 --> 00:57:20,900 I mean, I think it's really important not to take for granted the fact that people don't know this history. 426 00:57:20,900 --> 00:57:26,420 And if you want to find it, you won't find it on the Internet people. 427 00:57:26,420 --> 00:57:33,500 So don't go looking in Wikipedia for this. You won't if you Google, you won't find the story of the Black Unity and Freedom Party. 428 00:57:33,500 --> 00:57:36,890 You won't find the story of these other organisations. 429 00:57:36,890 --> 00:57:45,380 And in a way, what I don't even be interested to know if the library in this August university environment is even got a set of the black liberation. 430 00:57:45,380 --> 00:57:49,160 Somehow Ricky lives in Oxford, so they might well be here. 431 00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:53,900 But but I mean, just to put your hands on these things and a, Warick has a set, I think work, 432 00:57:53,900 --> 00:57:59,150 as I said, but it's very, very, very, very important to handle these things and see, you know, 433 00:57:59,150 --> 00:58:06,710 in the in the frictionless world we inhabit to see what went into the production of these objects, these text that could travel, 434 00:58:06,710 --> 00:58:13,130 these magazines, these discussions, the publishing, small magazine publishing is very, very important to recover. 435 00:58:13,130 --> 00:58:17,570 This is not just something we associate with the life of the black arts movement in the United States, 436 00:58:17,570 --> 00:58:23,930 but actually here we have a version of all of that to tell you where sorry. 437 00:58:23,930 --> 00:58:33,440 I tell you where you can find this kind of stuff. All this information is that the George Padmore Institute in London, 438 00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:40,760 they have an archive or rather we have an archive because I'm a part of the George Padmore Institute and one of the founding trustees. 439 00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:55,730 We have an archive of material going back 50 years or more which documents our struggles, you know, 440 00:58:55,730 --> 00:59:05,000 all the various movements, cultural and political movements from the fifties coming right down now. 441 00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:11,690 And you can check us out on the on the Internet, Google George Padmore Institute. 442 00:59:11,690 --> 00:59:15,530 You'll find this. And it's a research centre and an archive. 443 00:59:15,530 --> 00:59:24,510 I mean, we have students coming from as far away as the United States to study at the. 444 00:59:24,510 --> 00:59:32,670 Now, on this, I think it says on this post, we've got the reading based culture, reading based culture, 445 00:59:32,670 --> 00:59:40,230 and I think I thought we ought to talk a little bit about base, you know, and if you like the politics of frequency. 446 00:59:40,230 --> 00:59:47,520 When we met to talk about how to have this conversation a few weeks ago now, I said to him, well, 447 00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:54,960 I thought I always thought there was an echo of Ralph Ellison's on the lower frequencies I speak for you. 448 00:59:54,960 --> 01:00:00,620 That was part of the base culture. But he told me that that's not where it had come from. 449 01:00:00,620 --> 01:00:05,430 That made it more interesting in a way that these things that the attention to those frequencies, 450 01:00:05,430 --> 01:00:11,940 which are actually, I must say, in our era, a bit different to what they've become in the era of the subwoofer. 451 01:00:11,940 --> 01:00:21,300 I know that what happens below 50 hertz can become a very esoteric consideration of interest only to people who play the bass. 452 01:00:21,300 --> 01:00:30,500 But I think there's something about the poetry, if you don't mind my asking this, which really relates to the life of the bass as a sound. 453 01:00:30,500 --> 01:00:41,400 And I know that when Andrew Salkey wrote his introduction to Jedburgh in Blood, he talked about the the music, the word music of the poetry. 454 01:00:41,400 --> 01:00:48,720 And he did that long before the well, the music became explicit or a music became explicit. 455 01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:57,360 So I'm interested in that shift from music that is implied in the poetry to music, which is explicitly heard with the poetry. 456 01:00:57,360 --> 01:01:02,370 And I'm interested to know how the bass fits into that, because I believe you. 457 01:01:02,370 --> 01:01:08,610 You dabble a bit in that area. Yeah, I mean, I play a bit of bass, not professionally. 458 01:01:08,610 --> 01:01:15,070 Most people involved in music, composing a guitar or on a piano are composed with a bass. 459 01:01:15,070 --> 01:01:20,420 I always begin everything with the bass line and. 460 01:01:20,420 --> 01:01:38,480 I guess as a poet, I've always been interested in the language, the music in language, the musicality of speech and. 461 01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:46,120 When I began to write verse in in the Jamaican vernacular or Jamaican language. 462 01:01:46,120 --> 01:01:58,220 Base, I was here in the base, in the background, and I wanted I wanted to I want I was aspiring towards. 463 01:01:58,220 --> 01:02:05,600 Towards a kind of a musicality that was. 464 01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:10,870 In the language itself, I wanted to write. 465 01:02:10,870 --> 01:02:24,100 I wanted to write language that sounded like a bass line and and basically that was my approach to to write in verse, 466 01:02:24,100 --> 01:02:31,180 the one drop of reggae was a way of of of. 467 01:02:31,180 --> 01:02:37,000 Working out my midterm, my metrical symmetrical shape of the of the poem, 468 01:02:37,000 --> 01:02:43,930 I remember one time I heard Amiri Baraka, the American African-American poet, say that the blues, 469 01:02:43,930 --> 01:02:51,520 when he when he began to write verse the blues, was very important in his formation and especially the talking blues, 470 01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:55,150 where people would be talking the words instead of singing them. 471 01:02:55,150 --> 01:03:04,310 And that I could relate to that because I had the same experience, you know, and I guess. 472 01:03:04,310 --> 01:03:13,130 Also listening to the last points on and hearing oral oral poetry, 473 01:03:13,130 --> 01:03:25,070 basically accompanied by percussion and then listening to the Jamaican reggae deejays were basically improvising, 474 01:03:25,070 --> 01:03:32,340 although they weren't talking, they were more or less chanting or. 475 01:03:32,340 --> 01:03:43,600 The claim that, you know, words over a piece of music, a drum and bass track, and but I want I didn't want to do what the deejays were doing. 476 01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:47,770 I wanted to do poetry that sounded like music. 477 01:03:47,770 --> 01:03:52,600 And that has been my basic approach. That's been my aesthetic, you know. 478 01:03:52,600 --> 01:03:55,670 But how did that did that change the way you performed the poetry? 479 01:03:55,670 --> 01:04:02,560 Because obviously, if you're standing in front of a band, people think of you as a singer rather than a poet. 480 01:04:02,560 --> 01:04:07,320 Well, yes. Yes. And it has always been. 481 01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:18,600 It is always there's always been a bit of some tension there because, you know, it's only in the last maybe 20 years or so, 482 01:04:18,600 --> 01:04:27,770 I've learnt to recite these poems properly because when I used to recite them in the beginning. 483 01:04:27,770 --> 01:04:34,880 There was too much there was too much internation, you know, to. 484 01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:42,060 I was trying too hard to bring up the musicality, and it was much later on that I realised I didn't need to do that. 485 01:04:42,060 --> 01:04:56,960 But when I'm performing with the band, I tend to fall back into that, you know, and I prefer to be honest, I enjoy doing both. 486 01:04:56,960 --> 01:05:06,380 But if I have to choose between reciting poetry unaccompanied and playing with a band, I would choose reciting poetry on its own. 487 01:05:06,380 --> 01:05:17,510 I couldn't earn a living from that. But, you know, when I was asking you about your influences, our conversation included, 488 01:05:17,510 --> 01:05:21,170 that is to hope you don't mind me saying this, that you had at one point. 489 01:05:21,170 --> 01:05:26,240 Imagine that you might make a recording of the Love Song of J. 490 01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:36,560 Alfred Prufrock with a with a suitable and a suitable reggae accompaniment and framing. 491 01:05:36,560 --> 01:05:41,990 And I that interested me very much because I'd always imagined that there were 492 01:05:41,990 --> 01:05:46,910 certain things in your poetry where you registering the influence of Elliott. 493 01:05:46,910 --> 01:05:50,870 So it's very interesting to me that you said actually that wasn't the case and Elliott had come 494 01:05:50,870 --> 01:05:59,390 into your poetic imagination via Christopher Christopher Columbus was influenced by T.S. Eliot. 495 01:05:59,390 --> 01:06:10,160 When I first came across the work of Christopher Kimball through my mentor John Leros, he introduced me to the work of Christopher. 496 01:06:10,160 --> 01:06:13,970 And I love this poetry, you know, 497 01:06:13,970 --> 01:06:27,470 and I noticed that at the beginning of some of the of his poems you saw accompanied by corer or whatever flute or, you know, so. 498 01:06:27,470 --> 01:06:38,870 But later on, I began to read English poetry because for a time when I first became interested in verse poetry, 499 01:06:38,870 --> 01:06:49,400 I've mostly read Caribbean poets, I read the African poets, poets of Negritude, African-American poets, Caribbean poets. 500 01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:57,250 And then I began to branch out a bit wider. And then I realised that there was. 501 01:06:57,250 --> 01:07:07,270 In T.S. Eliot Spitzer, a lot of it is quite lyrical, quite musical, you know, and I particularly like that poem, The Love Song of AJ Prufrock. 502 01:07:07,270 --> 01:07:15,250 And I did do a rendition of it at a recording studio in Switzerland. 503 01:07:15,250 --> 01:07:22,570 I was there and I had some time to kill and I composed the best. 504 01:07:22,570 --> 01:07:30,610 I composed the bass line to go with it. And I think it worked. 505 01:07:30,610 --> 01:07:41,390 But I was I think I was trying to get permission to, you know, to do a reggae rendition of of of other stuff, but. 506 01:07:41,390 --> 01:07:50,180 Is that the answer was no, basically, yeah. 507 01:07:50,180 --> 01:08:00,410 What's also really striking to me is how important the environment that was created around the International Book Fair, Black, 508 01:08:00,410 --> 01:08:10,800 Radical and Third World books as a place where poets and artists often actually other poets who use music in their presentation of their work. 509 01:08:10,800 --> 01:08:17,330 I'm thinking of Jane Cortez and thinking also of Michael Smith, because Linton, 510 01:08:17,330 --> 01:08:22,580 in conjunction with Dennis Bovell, produced an extraordinary rich and amazing. 511 01:08:22,580 --> 01:08:26,240 I don't think he's probably in Japan. You can buy it, but you can't get it anywhere else. 512 01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:32,930 Bye bye, Mikey Smith. So I think that was a place where different poets and different forms of poetry and 513 01:08:32,930 --> 01:08:39,680 a struggle over the relationship between sound and words was being played with. 514 01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:45,200 And that was a very nourishing and and useful space that you all created. 515 01:08:45,200 --> 01:08:52,190 I think the book by Roxy Harris and Margaret Busby is a fantastic account of all of that project. 516 01:08:52,190 --> 01:08:59,580 But I guess Roxanne Harris, Sarah Wilde and John Shamila, I'm so sorry. 517 01:08:59,580 --> 01:09:04,370 I don't know where it is, but I can't remember the details on their own. 518 01:09:04,370 --> 01:09:08,840 Please forgive me for that. That that is such a resource. 519 01:09:08,840 --> 01:09:12,950 That book is such an extraordinary resource. It's so valuable and so important. 520 01:09:12,950 --> 01:09:19,070 And I guess I'd say you can't really understand the cultural life of of of London and 521 01:09:19,070 --> 01:09:25,170 perhaps of this country without really reckoning with with the space that was created there. 522 01:09:25,170 --> 01:09:32,880 Well, you know, I was one of the organisers, as you know, of the International Book Fair of Radical Black on Third World Books, 523 01:09:32,880 --> 01:09:42,060 which was organised jointly in the beginning by New Beacon Books, Bhogle Overture and Race Today publications. 524 01:09:42,060 --> 01:09:54,870 And then after some years after Bogdanovich dropped out and it was released today and and New Beacon and then race today dropped out. 525 01:09:54,870 --> 01:10:07,490 And then it was a new beacon, basically. And J Records, which is my record company, the book fair was. 526 01:10:07,490 --> 01:10:22,820 It ran from 1982 to 1995, and it was not just simply a marketplace for books of interest to black people, 527 01:10:22,820 --> 01:10:28,520 it was a meeting of continents, which is what that book was called, a meeting of continents. 528 01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:37,370 People came from Africa, from the United States, from the Caribbean and from other parts of Europe and so on. 529 01:10:37,370 --> 01:10:46,190 And we had these forums where we discussed the burning topics of the day. 530 01:10:46,190 --> 01:11:02,500 Politics to do with politics, culture, there was there were film shows, there was theatrical productions, poetry readings and so on and so forth. 531 01:11:02,500 --> 01:11:14,840 I think it was a very, very important initiative, a very important intervention at the time by John LaRue's, who came up with the idea. 532 01:11:14,840 --> 01:11:21,220 And even nowadays I go to if I go to America, I'm I'm in New York. 533 01:11:21,220 --> 01:11:27,880 I meet people who were at the book fair and said, when are you going to have another book fair? You know, because it was unique. 534 01:11:27,880 --> 01:11:34,150 But like most things, I think it outlived its own success. It was you know, it outlived its own. 535 01:11:34,150 --> 01:11:39,730 It was a victim of its own success. I mean, we discussed topics. 536 01:11:39,730 --> 01:11:50,480 Can you imagine as far back as the 1980s, we were discussing things like the revolution in new technology. 537 01:11:50,480 --> 01:11:52,220 You know, back in those days, 538 01:11:52,220 --> 01:12:04,520 I think mobile phones were about this being the revolution in new in new technology and the way it would impact on on on on communication, 539 01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:17,420 creativity and work and so on. You know, and by the way, the general consensus at the time during those discussions in the 80s was that. 540 01:12:17,420 --> 01:12:30,860 We welcome the revolution in new technology because it could provide the basis for full employment in modern developed societies. 541 01:12:30,860 --> 01:12:48,170 Because of the increase in productive capacity, if only we could have the shorter work and the shorter working week and the shorter working life. 542 01:12:48,170 --> 01:12:55,430 Well, that brings us to where we are. And I wonder how you feel about the situation that we're in, because, you know, 543 01:12:55,430 --> 01:13:02,330 we talk about the sufferings of the heroic generation that we talked about, the sufferings of the rebel generation. 544 01:13:02,330 --> 01:13:09,710 And obviously recently, as we all know, the rebel generation is being shafted a second time over. 545 01:13:09,710 --> 01:13:19,360 And I wanted, you know, as an artist as well as a political thinker, if the question that you asked when you read down the road, 546 01:13:19,360 --> 01:13:26,090 down the road, things and things in time, how, how how would you answer that question today? 547 01:13:26,090 --> 01:13:30,950 I don't know if I if I if indeed I have an answer. 548 01:13:30,950 --> 01:13:40,400 I would say that, as I said earlier, that we, you know, we built our autonomous institutions, political, social and cultural. 549 01:13:40,400 --> 01:13:50,950 We organised, we agitated, we propagandised, we demonstrated, and we are insurrections and uprisings and eventually. 550 01:13:50,950 --> 01:14:00,470 We integrated ourselves into British society because I remember as a youth, as a youngster, there was this myth that we didn't want to integrate. 551 01:14:00,470 --> 01:14:03,520 There was something was keeping us back from integrating. 552 01:14:03,520 --> 01:14:10,690 It was nothing that, you know, people it's not as though that people didn't want us to integrate. 553 01:14:10,690 --> 01:14:17,110 You know, I mean, a family would buy a house on a street where there's only white people living. 554 01:14:17,110 --> 01:14:26,350 And the next thing you know, it's it's half of it is over. Three quarters of it is black because all the other white people would move out. 555 01:14:26,350 --> 01:14:33,370 So, yes, we've made some progress over the decades. 556 01:14:33,370 --> 01:14:41,500 When I was a youngster growing up, black people were marginalised. We were on the periphery of British society. 557 01:14:41,500 --> 01:14:49,210 We were treated like third class citizens. No, we are slightly closer to the centre. 558 01:14:49,210 --> 01:14:54,460 We've made some progress. We've we've got a black middle class. 559 01:14:54,460 --> 01:15:02,140 We have a voice in the houses of parliament, which we didn't have before, and so on and so forth. 560 01:15:02,140 --> 01:15:06,250 But some things that some things haven't changed at all. 561 01:15:06,250 --> 01:15:11,770 And we still have a long way to go in our struggle for racial equality and social justice. 562 01:15:11,770 --> 01:15:17,500 This younger generation, they have to take up the mantle and take the struggles forward. 563 01:15:17,500 --> 01:15:29,110 You know, and I'm glad that I see signs of the politicisation of young black people in this country now largely inspired, 564 01:15:29,110 --> 01:15:35,440 I guess, by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States of America. 565 01:15:35,440 --> 01:15:43,100 But. The thing that troubles me most, the things that worries me most, Paul, 566 01:15:43,100 --> 01:15:54,170 is the fact that the protracted war of attrition against young black people is still being waged by the police. 567 01:15:54,170 --> 01:16:03,220 You know that that troubles me. That's true, and it troubles me, it troubles me as well. 568 01:16:03,220 --> 01:16:10,570 I know you're not keen on the Internet. Well, it's just the computer illiterate that I do. 569 01:16:10,570 --> 01:16:21,520 I wonder, too, about the effects of moving from a political culture which is offline to a political culture which is largely conducted online, 570 01:16:21,520 --> 01:16:31,690 and that allows people to kind of luxuriate in the fantasy that we will proceed as though we were living in the United States. 571 01:16:31,690 --> 01:16:38,870 And that, too, seems to be a worrying thing because there can't be a generic identity. 572 01:16:38,870 --> 01:16:48,310 You talked about about working on your identity in the generation to which we belong in a very specific setting, in a very specific place. 573 01:16:48,310 --> 01:16:51,820 We didn't imagine we were everywhere, whether everywhere was the same. 574 01:16:51,820 --> 01:16:59,770 There were sticky, intractable local factors that shape the way we thought about our lives and the possibility of a future. 575 01:16:59,770 --> 01:17:05,860 And I think now if people if people give in to the fantasy that everything that's going on here is the 576 01:17:05,860 --> 01:17:13,160 same as what they think is going on the United States via the portal that the computer provides them, 577 01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:21,630 we're in a big, big mess. Well, on that note, I'm looking at the clock. 578 01:17:21,630 --> 01:17:54,290 Yeah, I think it's about time I started a couple more portable. Um. 579 01:17:54,290 --> 01:17:59,990 You know, we were just talking about the revolution in new technology and all that. 580 01:17:59,990 --> 01:18:11,000 Well, there's a poem I wrote which came out of those discussions we had at the International Book Fair for Radical Black on Third World books. 581 01:18:11,000 --> 01:18:22,560 And I caught it more time. We're marching all towards the new century, armed with the new technology, 582 01:18:22,560 --> 01:18:29,730 we're getting more and more productivity, some things looking up for prosperity. 583 01:18:29,730 --> 01:18:37,020 But if everyone go and get a share, this time with mentality must get left behind. 584 01:18:37,020 --> 01:18:41,880 We want the show to work in again with the shorter working week longer already. 585 01:18:41,880 --> 01:18:48,240 We need decent pay, more time for leisure, more time for pleasure, more time for edification, 586 01:18:48,240 --> 01:18:54,210 more time for recreation, more time to contemplate, more time through, many more time to really it. 587 01:18:54,210 --> 01:18:59,720 More time. We need more time. Give it more time. 588 01:18:59,720 --> 01:19:10,410 A full time them abolish unemployment and revolutionised Labour deployment of full time, then banish overtime, make everybody get to work. 589 01:19:10,410 --> 01:19:14,900 This time we need a higher quality of liberty. 590 01:19:14,900 --> 01:19:21,470 We need it. No one, everybody. We want to show up to work in a year with the shorter work life. 591 01:19:21,470 --> 01:19:27,700 More time for the husband, more time for the wife, more time for the children, more time for your friend. 592 01:19:27,700 --> 01:19:35,030 The more time committed to it. More time to create. More time to live in, more time for life, more time. 593 01:19:35,030 --> 01:19:53,560 We need more time. Give me more time. Towards the end of the 1980s and in the early 90s. 594 01:19:53,560 --> 01:20:00,510 There were a number of atrocities. Committed in Eastern Europe. 595 01:20:00,510 --> 01:20:05,620 In Eastern Africa. And parts of the Middle East. 596 01:20:05,620 --> 01:20:12,230 And. That was around the time that the term ethnic cleansing. 597 01:20:12,230 --> 01:20:18,470 Gained currency as a way of speaking about these acts of barbarism. 598 01:20:18,470 --> 01:20:24,890 And. Personally, I don't like this term ethnic cleansing. 599 01:20:24,890 --> 01:20:32,460 Because it presupposes to my simple, naive way of thinking, it presupposes the notion. 600 01:20:32,460 --> 01:20:40,850 Of ethnic pollution. And once one begin to think along those kind of lines, you end up with. 601 01:20:40,850 --> 01:20:48,110 You know, like what they had during the last World War, the Holocaust and stuff like that. 602 01:20:48,110 --> 01:20:57,230 We need to be careful about how we use language because we not only negotiate our everyday reality through language, 603 01:20:57,230 --> 01:21:02,530 more importantly, we define our humanity through language. 604 01:21:02,530 --> 01:21:07,740 And for me, this term, ethnic cleansing. 605 01:21:07,740 --> 01:21:16,090 Is represents the dehumanisation of language and the language of dehumanisation. 606 01:21:16,090 --> 01:21:21,000 So I wrote this poem about it called New World Order. 607 01:21:21,000 --> 01:21:30,690 The killers are Kigali must be sanitary workers, the butchers abattoir, it must be sanitary workers, the savages of Chatila must be sanitary workers. 608 01:21:30,690 --> 01:21:44,120 The beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers. You know, the new word, I'd like a dirty old bandage, the festering fears of humanity, 609 01:21:44,120 --> 01:21:54,590 the all the unravel and reveal will scare just broke out in a new sewer primaeval one that time will heal. 610 01:21:54,590 --> 01:22:02,980 And in the ancient currency of blader, trade by the tyrants Asika will score. 611 01:22:02,980 --> 01:22:09,280 The killers are God, they must be sanitary workers, the butchers arbitrary must be sanitary workers. 612 01:22:09,280 --> 01:22:17,170 The savages of Chatila must be sanitary workers. The beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers. 613 01:22:17,170 --> 01:22:27,100 You know, the new world order, and it's the same or key in uneatable syndrome, far more urgent than the fall of Rome, 614 01:22:27,100 --> 01:22:34,300 but in the new world of atrocity is a brand new language of barbarity, mass murder, 615 01:22:34,300 --> 01:22:44,860 normalise pogrom, rationalise genocide, sanitise an ancient clan sin, no Niam ethnic cleansing. 616 01:22:44,860 --> 01:22:51,340 And so the killers are to God, it must be sanitary workers. The butchers arbitrary must be sanitary workers. 617 01:22:51,340 --> 01:22:58,600 The savages of Chatila must be sanitary workers. The beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers. 618 01:22:58,600 --> 01:23:04,870 pre-programme problem is the new world order. 619 01:23:04,870 --> 01:23:12,660 Um, I was. Inspired to write a poem. 620 01:23:12,660 --> 01:23:21,400 About black deaths in police custody because of an ongoing campaign that's been waged from the 90s onwards. 621 01:23:21,400 --> 01:23:30,620 About the. Disproportionate number of black people dying in police custody and as far as I know, 622 01:23:30,620 --> 01:23:40,310 there's never been any successful prosecutions of police officers for those deaths. 623 01:23:40,310 --> 01:23:45,650 And it seemed to me at the time I was right in the point that there was a kind of a conspiracy, 624 01:23:45,650 --> 01:23:56,420 a conspiracy of silence by those in authorities about these deaths in custody, in police custody. 625 01:23:56,420 --> 01:24:06,050 So I wrote this poem called Licence to Kill is a conversation between two workers in a factory that goes like this, 626 01:24:06,050 --> 01:24:14,560 sometimes hitting the co-worker crazy. Do you, Christine, with a gun joke, a joke the next time? 627 01:24:14,560 --> 01:24:19,660 No, a no nonsense stance. Do we issue Wendong, the Prius, 628 01:24:19,660 --> 01:24:28,810 last Christmas dance that we should love it both conspiracy me and in the county not 629 01:24:28,810 --> 01:24:37,130 talk about the death of black people in our custody or not a Miyo Narad them dog bark? 630 01:24:37,130 --> 01:24:41,740 Oh, nobody, Eyüp, in our society can offer explanation. 631 01:24:41,740 --> 01:24:53,180 No remedy. When Christina topower bro like zero zero screw up our fears like a bigotry is here are no. 632 01:24:53,180 --> 01:25:01,700 You think I just am I five on GM's Bunn and police on soldier are not I learnt one when it comes to black people. 633 01:25:01,700 --> 01:25:07,860 Winston Salem police in England got a licence to kill. 634 01:25:07,860 --> 01:25:13,590 Well, not in Christine's surprise. What but you, Yamano. 635 01:25:13,590 --> 01:25:21,780 Well, you mean, Christine, I would tell you that unless you are idiot, you can prove that. 636 01:25:21,780 --> 01:25:30,840 I would tell them if they go said that Christine Kissa, then she cut me with diarrhoea and she said, You are improve. 637 01:25:30,840 --> 01:25:35,900 You can ask Clinton kerb in Baltimore, asphyxiation on your car, knocks dryer. 638 01:25:35,900 --> 01:25:44,950 God, no. What are suffocation? Your Kanaks culinary, which is the real issue with himself on your Kanaks Vincent Graham if you hear him stab himself. 639 01:25:44,950 --> 01:25:53,320 But you can ask the commissioner about the licence. Fickell occiput Kendon the licence to kill your Kanaks. 640 01:25:53,320 --> 01:25:56,720 The dog lets them both. Then you stand button on your car. 641 01:25:56,720 --> 01:26:06,490 Toni Hassan bought them that by and neglect the Kanaks Marlon Donz if the mother any regret on your Kanaks El-Gamal bought the mystery that. 642 01:26:06,490 --> 01:26:12,190 But you can ask them Barbara what the licence Fickell the DP. 643 01:26:12,190 --> 01:26:21,130 But the licence to kill your Kanaks Ibraheem about the iest gas attack your car knocks Mrs. Jerrett Oh should get their heart attack. 644 01:26:21,130 --> 01:26:27,730 Your Kanaks only have a price the grip. Rohan Gymnich and your Karnac Steve Boice bought him dead by neglect. 645 01:26:27,730 --> 01:26:37,360 What you Kanaks the past year both the licence to kill Sepo, both the licence Fishkin Yosfiah Margaret Thatcher. 646 01:26:37,360 --> 01:26:46,660 Both the licence fee König Kanaks John Major the licence to kill your fiance Michael Howard bought the licence fee and you, 647 01:26:46,660 --> 01:26:55,270 Kanaks Jack Straw broke the rule of law. You asked Tony Blair if it means that we are kear both the licence fee killed with plenty. 648 01:26:55,270 --> 01:27:07,300 Please feel them gut. Sometimes the co-worker crazy the way Christine, with that one joke, the joke the next time, no, 649 01:27:07,300 --> 01:27:17,450 I know nuns and stunts that we should wendong the place last Christmas dance, the creation of a tugboat conspiracy. 650 01:27:17,450 --> 01:27:23,560 And finally. I'd like to do a poem. 651 01:27:23,560 --> 01:27:39,390 About poetry and. Some years ago, somebody brought it to my attention that my name was in the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry. 652 01:27:39,390 --> 01:27:57,880 Albeit as a footnote. And it was something to do with dub poetry and somebody was quoted as describing the poetry as overcompensation for deprivation. 653 01:27:57,880 --> 01:28:01,630 And I said, well, this sounds like a nice little sound bite, 654 01:28:01,630 --> 01:28:11,080 but really I can't ignore it because my name has been associated with this so-called poetry. 655 01:28:11,080 --> 01:28:20,210 So by way of riposte, I wrote this piece and I begin with a little quotation from. 656 01:28:20,210 --> 01:28:29,870 Bongo, Jerry. What a line in one of his poems that went most of the straightening is in the tongue. 657 01:28:29,870 --> 01:28:38,180 So by way of repassed, this is my piece called If I was a top notch poet, 658 01:28:38,180 --> 01:28:51,560 if I was a top notch poet like Bo Derek Walcott or T.S. Eliot, I would write a poem so deep that it bittersweet. 659 01:28:51,560 --> 01:28:58,940 Like a precious memory would make you weep, would make you feel incomplete, 660 01:28:58,940 --> 01:29:04,720 like when your lover leave under the feet, you can see still your big on your plea till you win. 661 01:29:04,720 --> 01:29:15,560 No reprieve on your ready for Rocksteady. But then he was already still in the meantime with me rhythm, with my rhyme, with my best line with me. 662 01:29:15,560 --> 01:29:24,270 One sense of time. One positive step in line, Buthelezi, my Caputo's on what, Monday? 663 01:29:24,270 --> 01:29:30,070 Lafi Thousands are thousands and thousands and thousands. 664 01:29:30,070 --> 01:29:40,440 If I was a top notch poet like Cummo, Brathwaite, Martin Carter and Catanzaro, Amiri Baraka. 665 01:29:40,440 --> 01:29:50,150 I would write a poem so rude and rude, Cihan subversive that they go and put it on white with envy like a condom, 666 01:29:50,150 --> 01:30:00,170 black voodoo coming John Time CALIPSO amorously of song, not get burned, but from Grunty right down to Grand Pickney. 667 01:30:00,170 --> 01:30:06,200 Each and everyone can recite that one. Still in the mean time. 668 01:30:06,200 --> 01:30:11,570 With my rhythm, with my rhyme, with my best line. With me. One sense a time. 669 01:30:11,570 --> 01:30:23,590 Go and pull it off. Step in line, Buthelezi, my Tagget Capito's on what Monday Lafi him thousands are thousands and thousands and thousands. 670 01:30:23,590 --> 01:30:28,210 If I was a top notch poet like Choucair your thumbs. 671 01:30:28,210 --> 01:30:32,140 Nicholas Gwinn are allowing a Goodison. 672 01:30:32,140 --> 01:30:45,640 I would write a poem so beautiful that it's simple like a pillion girl with good Bryn's a nice way is with a sexy disposition and plenty compassion, 673 01:30:45,640 --> 01:30:58,240 with a sweet smile and a subtle style. Still Monongah bones krippen going like a peddling of pure parchment of ethnicity with only a vague, 674 01:30:58,240 --> 01:31:09,310 fleeting hint of authenticity like a black Lance Percival in reverse or even worse, a bumbling buffoon when it was him tongue. 675 01:31:09,310 --> 01:31:18,320 No, sir, not at all. Maybe the mirror mirror of Bistline got one since our time. 676 01:31:18,320 --> 01:31:29,450 Go and pull it off. Step in line, Buthelezi, My Tagaq Caputo's on what Mandela have imposed on the thousands and thousands and thousands. 677 01:31:29,450 --> 01:31:57,810 Thank you very much. Thank you. 678 01:31:57,810 --> 01:32:15,280 Andrea. Well, I'm sure we could go on listening to this fascinating history that's been narrated for us this evening, 679 01:32:15,280 --> 01:32:18,990 but it's time to close and to have some refreshment. 680 01:32:18,990 --> 01:32:29,190 So before I thank everybody who's been involved, I would just like to warmly invite everybody to come to join us for a glass of wine outside. 681 01:32:29,190 --> 01:32:35,970 You're very, very welcome. And there's also both Paul Gilroy and Lyndon Johnson's books are on sale. 682 01:32:35,970 --> 01:32:44,370 And you can have your book signed by the writers on the spot and and continue the chat one on one. 683 01:32:44,370 --> 01:32:53,410 And so I think we've all I think we will recognise this very palpable from the spirit in the room that this has been, to quote Lyndon himself. 684 01:32:53,410 --> 01:33:00,900 This has been a historical occasion that we have all been participating in at a time when the Britishness 685 01:33:00,900 --> 01:33:06,960 of the Windrush generation and those who came after them has shamefully been called into question. 686 01:33:06,960 --> 01:33:13,440 How significant has been to recognise the Britishness and worldliness of Linton Kwesi Johnson's 687 01:33:13,440 --> 01:33:19,830 poetry and in conversation with the very significant theorist of black Atlantic culture? 688 01:33:19,830 --> 01:33:29,440 Paul Gilroy. It's also been fabulous to see Luisa Lahn chair and indeed compare this session. 689 01:33:29,440 --> 01:33:34,080 She has been absolutely instrumental from the beginning in bringing this event together. 690 01:33:34,080 --> 01:33:37,290 So very, very warm thanks to her. Thank you. 691 01:33:37,290 --> 01:33:44,460 To the torch team, to the English faculty for helping with the staging and the organisation of this event. 692 01:33:44,460 --> 01:33:50,580 Many thanks to the John Fell fund for funding it, thanks to Erika Lombards, 693 01:33:50,580 --> 01:33:59,520 who couldn't be here this evening for the wonderful poster that that has that has accompanied the event. 694 01:33:59,520 --> 01:34:09,390 And then finally, I hope you can all join me putting our hands together in one drop beat. 695 01:34:09,390 --> 01:34:24,190 And I just say a thank you to Louisa for doing me the honour of writing your thesis on. 696 01:34:24,190 --> 01:34:33,610 All very much for agreeing, doing the honour of engaging in this conversation with me, I'm a big fan of your work as well, 697 01:34:33,610 --> 01:34:42,850 although you might not know that I think your book After Empire is one of the most prescient things that I read in a long time, 698 01:34:42,850 --> 01:34:48,220 because where we are today, it's all in your book after Empire. 699 01:34:48,220 --> 01:35:15,243 Thank you. And thank you so much to Clinton himself, Robert.