Hello and welcome. My name's Ballester, I am chair of the board of the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford.
This is a very significant and timely event which we're honoured to be hosting here at the faculty of English.
I'm really delighted on behalf of the faculty to welcome two of Britain's leading authors who've been formative in the
development of the tastes and sensibilities of so many readers and listeners in the United Kingdom and across the globe today.
Just to explain this event a little bit, it's a culminating event in the Great Writers Inspire at Home Project,
which is funded by Oxford universities,
fell fund and housed in the English faculty under the inspiring leadership of our professor in world literature, Ellika, Burma.
That project explores the ways in which contemporary black and Asian British writing is changing.
How we see and read literature in English around Britain and do explore the websites.
A wonderful website called Writers Make Worlds dot com, which provides a record and a resource in the area.
There are few more related events in the next few months, including Renney at large.
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.
First of all, the lively English faculty postcolonial writing and theory seminar that runs fortnightly throughout the year.
It's convened by L.A. and also by Professor Anche Mukerji.
And this event is a special postcolonial seminar.
And second, very many thanks to the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities known as Torch, who've helped very much with the organisation.
I'm going to hand over to Dr Luisa Olofsson Lane to introduce our two speakers at the risk of over introducing.
Just to tell you that Dr Lane completed her defeat here in the English faculty last summer and it
focussed on the relationship between the aesthetics and politics in the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson.
She's currently a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Oslo,
and we're very proud to welcome her back to formally introduce our guests.
So I look forward as to all of you to listening and participating in this conversation.
Yeah, I would like to say my own words are welcome to this special event that the English
faculty and a torch and this is also part of the great writers inspired series.
So we're also here to recognise Quincy Jones is a very important work.
And also welcome to Paul Gilroy, a major scholar of the culture of the black Atlantic, has agreed to participate in this conversation.
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,
I was asked quite often, how is it to write a thesis of the living poets and is really nice.
So that's all I can say. Yeah.
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,
and then I'm going to ask you both a general question.
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,
and then we're going to open up for questions and answers from the audience.
So to introduce Lyndon Johnson is an acclaimed Jamaican born British poet and performer,
he coined and popularised the term poetry, a form of performance based aural poetry inspired by reggae music.
In 2002, he became the the the the second living poet published in the Penguin Modern Classics series,
as well as having released several commercially successful and classic albums as a reggae artist,
John speaks volumes of poetry include Voices of the Living and the Dead from 1970, four dead beats in blood from nineteen seventy five.
And England is a bit from nineteen eighty. Paul Gilroy is a professor of American and English literature at King's College, London,
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.
So. Linton, they want to maybe read for us.
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.
Now, before that, The Onion, the Oxford Union, did something at the Oxford Union so many years ago,
I'm very pleased to be here and I would like to say thank you to all those involved in organising this event and.
I will begin, as I always do. Um. I want to read for about half an hour, is that all right?
I'm going to begin with my first published poem, We Scalloway Idea is my school friend is sitting right there in the front.
I don't know what he's doing in.
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.
And. It's about. Knife crime.
Five nights of bleeding for Leroy Harris. Madness, madness, madness, titan, the heads of the rebels, the bitterness erupts like a hot blast,
broke glass rituals of blood on the burning serve by a cruel in fighting five nights of horror,
one of Bleadon ruthless cold blades as sharp as the eyes of hate on the Stubbins.
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.
Commando and his reggae reggae wire.
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.
It's war amongst the rebels. Madness, madness, oi.
Now, number two, down at Sheppards, right up Railton Road.
It was a night Niam Friday when everyone was high on Broo or drew a pond or two watercolour.
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.
Steel blade, drinking blood and darkness. It's war amongst the rebels.
Madness, madness now, knight, no tree over the river, right outside the rainbow.
Inside, James Brown was screaming soul outside, the rebels were freezing cold.
Babylonian tyrants descended Pownce Thunder brothers who were bold, so with the flick of their is a Japanese dub,
the son of Blades was sounded the bite of a was vomited on two policemen, wounded, righteous, righteous war.
Night number four at a blues dance, a blues dance, two rooms packed under pressure, pushing up hot, hot heads,
rituals of blood in a blues dance broke glass splintering fire axes, blades,
brain blast rebellion rushing down the wrong road, stumbling down the wrong tree.
And Leroy bleeding to death on the fourth night in a blues dance on a black rebellious night.
It's war amongst the rebels. Madness, madness, oi.
Night number five, the Telegraph Vengeance walked through the doors so slow, so smooth, so tight and ripe and smash.
Broke glass, a bottle finds I head done the shell of the fire hurt KRUX.
The victim feels fear, Fine's hands hold knife finds throat.
Or the stabbings and the bleeding and the blood. It's soire amongst the rebels, muddiness, muddiness, oir.
It was. Clear to me and my contemporaries when I was a youth youngster, that the police.
At least the Metropolitan Police Force in London and declare war.
Against the black youth of my generation. That war has been an ongoing one, it has been a protracted war.
A significant section of the youth of my generation were criminalised by racist police
officers under a law we knew in our communities as the SUS law society ensured for suspicion.
Invariably, you would be arrested and charged with attempting to steal from persons unknown.
Your alleged victim was never produced in court to give evidence against you.
It was your word against the police officer. And in that way, um.
As I said, a significant section of my contemporaries were criminalised.
We had a campaign to get rid of this law due in the 1970s out of that campaign as a contribution to that campaign,
I should say, I wrote this poem called Sunny's Letter. The writer of the letter is trying to explain to his mother.
Was in the Caribbean somewhere where he finds himself incarcerated with his brother Sarnies letter.
Brixton prison. Jebba Avenue. London sold west to England.
Dear Mama, good day. I hope that when these few lines reach you, they may find you in the best of health.
Mama. I really don't know how to tell you this.
Karzai did make a solemn promise to take care, Jim, I'm trying my best to look out for him.
Mama. I really did try my best. But nonetheless, Masaru Vitelli is a political gem guitarist.
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.
We are in Barnabus not causing no fuss when Harlen asudden a police van pull up.
Oh, Drumcree policemen who wear them carrying button, then walk straight up to me and Jim excuse me, one other Molen to Jim.
So I'm taking him in. Jim, tell him to let go.
I am not Norton and I'm not Ts, not even a button.
The Jim start for Rega. The police got the Gigha.
Mama Michot tell you what happened to Jim? Mama.
Look, I tell you what happened to him, then pump him in the military and turn to jelly the family compound,
embark on a trip, get pop music in him, head what it was like, let them kick him.
Then it started to bleed. Mama, I just couldn't stand up there and do nothing.
So them I started to cry Mitton Guantánamo Dunnam started to shout, mckewon Funimation,
Unnim started to spin Tump Funimation on him dropped by not been on Krush.
And did. Mama.
More policemen come down and beat me to the grong them charge Jim FISAs.
Them charge me for murder. Mama.
Go for it, don't get depressed on donated.
Be of good courage till I hear from you.
I remain. Your son, Soni. Thank you, I'm not.
I'm not done yet. My.
I was fortunate as a as a youngster in the Black Panther movement.
I discovered. Something called black literature, because as a schoolboy's, as a schoolboy,
I had no idea that black people wrote books because there was nothing on the school curriculum that gave me that idea.
And in the Black Panthers, we had a library and I discovered a book called The Souls of Black Folk by WBB Dubois.
And that is what inspired me to try and express how I felt about.
The situation of my contemporaries growing up in a racially hostile environment, I was fortunate.
To have as my mentors. Two remarkable men from the Caribbean, the Jamaican novelist,
poet and broadcaster Anja Salkey and the Trinidadian publisher, poet and political activist John Leros,
John Taylor was co-founded New Beacon Books,
which was the first black publishing house in this country and bookseller established in nineteen sixty six.
And he also co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement alongside Andrea Salkin and the Barbadian poet Kamal Bethwaite.
John. Excuse me. John always used to like always used to talk about the so-called Windrush generation, the first generation of Caribbean migrants.
As the heroic generation and you call them the heroic generation because of what they were.
Able to achieve in spite of the racial hostility that confronted them.
Well. I belong to the second generation.
And we were a generation. We were not willing to tolerate the things our parents reluctantly tolerated.
In fact, we rebelled. And I think through our rebellion, we've helped to change this country a little bit for the better.
And this is a poem about a section of that generation to which I belong,
is it not funny people saying this, people saying that that you would have to the them carrying on our.
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,
it stein them with tech giants, they've got jump on them with tech giants,
Undem love blues, dance them with tech giants, and then don't call it the curse.
People saying this, people say that boat you would have to today owe them cause enough for you.
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,
then we take a chance to go Papadakis Tyldum with tech giants them do it all the while, then with tech johns.
What some of them lost them with tech giants and them don't count the cars.
People saying this, people saying that you would have to the boat that we had them steer.
No, in. It's not funny them with tech jobs, forget to call them with tech jobs,
with your little sister Ssali, them with tech jobs for them, feel them, force them with tech jobs.
But they've got no cause them with tech jobs. But there is not advance them with tech jobs on them.
Don't count because people saying this, people saying that both the youth of today or them really steer.
No, funny. Nossa. It's not funny.
I saw Paul. With this book, my very.
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.
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?
You know, then I looked in this other book, Things and Times, and it wasn't there either.
And then I saw Paul with this. I don't know what he doing with it.
And I thought, oh, I'm going to try out that poem because it's one of my earliest poems.
And again, it deals with the team, the theme of knife crime and a lot of other things down the road.
Heavy, heavy terror on the rampage or don't you worry, it is so near.
Fratricide is only the first phase. I wrote this poem when I was reading Franz Fanon, so of Friends for Non Influence.
For him. Yes, the violence of the oppressed are running while then picking up with you, them fish sauce, poetry,
prophesying a black, a black, a black conquest on the national front is on the rampage, making firebombs the burn.
We terrified a terrifying creature such as suffering with suffering in this burning age of rage,
no place to run to get gone, and the violence numbing up inside.
So in the heat of the anguish, you just turn your turn on your brother and your little Emmanuela Qimonda.
Stubborn man. You'll kill him. And the violence dummying up inside all that history should take such a rough root cause enough.
This bitterness and pain on the way is a room full of [INAUDIBLE].
You can't walk out. Fratricide is only the first phase with brother fighting, brother stabbing, brother them just killing off them one another.
But when you see your brother, blood just flow futile fighting,
then you know that the first phase must come to an end and time for the second phase to show.
I wrote that way back in the early 1970s. So in his letter, OK, I'm going to go into the it is now.
Um, in January. The 17th of January, 1981.
Yvonne Ruddock was celebrating her 16th birthday at four three nine across the road in southeast London when some racist,
some fascist through an incendiary device through the window of the house,
which resulted in a fire in which 13 young black people died and twenty six were seriously injured.
It was the police themselves who informed Mrs. Ruddock that it was an arson attack.
Those kind of arson attacks were not rare.
In fact, they've been going on they've been going on for a long time.
In nineteen seventy one, there was a similar arson attack on a West Indian Party.
Um. A lot of people were badly burned.
No one died in that fire. Someone was arrested and prosecuted by the police.
In the case of the new CROSSFIRE or the new cross massacre, as we call it.
The police did everything they could. To cover it up.
It was I think it was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of policing in this country.
You know, I saw on the news the other day they were talking about having a Stephen Lawrence Day every year,
the 22nd of April, there should be a new cross massacre or a new CROSSFIRE day.
When the fire occurred, there were no messages of condolence from the prime minister.
No messages of condolence from the queen. And instead of trying to find the people or the person responsible for the fire,
the police use their resources to discredit those of us in the black communities
who form the new Cross Musika Action Committee to do something about it.
The inquest was held with indecent haste within three months of the fire before the police had completed their so-called investigation.
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.
The new cost Musika Action Committee. Mobilised our communities.
And on the 2nd of March nineteen eighty one, we mobilised fifteen thousand people.
It was a national mobilisation.
We mobilised fifteen thousand people and we marched to Hyde Park to protest the death of those young people and to demand justice.
There was an early day motion in the House of Commons,
I can't remember which member of parliament and the letter was handed to Number 10 Downing Street.
Demanding justice, that was the Black People's Day of Action the 2nd of March 1981,
there was nothing like that ever seen before or since, for that matter.
And it was a watershed moment. Because it made those in authority take note of the fact that black people in this
country had some power and we could mobilise that power if and when we had to.
In April of that year, 1981. The police in Rixton, where I'm from, my neighbourhood, launched an operation called Operation Swamp One.
Where they went about stopping and search and harassing and intimidating black people, going about their everyday lawful business.
Well, a lot of bitterness had been building up over the years and we'd had a number of small scale riots,
most the biggest one was at the Notting Hill Carnival in nineteen seventy seven.
Seventy six. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and we had a huge uprising, riot, insurrection and.
It spread to every major inner city area in this country, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, all over the country.
Let me just recite the poem. There's too many things I could tell you about that.
I wrote a poem recording that historic moment.
Called the Great Insurrection. It was in April, nineteen eighty one going into the ghetto of Brixton,
that the bubble Undem caused such a friction that it bring about a great insurrection and it spread all over the nation.
It was truly an historical occasion. It was event of the year and I wish I had been there.
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,
when we mash up the swamp at the one figure to make them understand that we're not on more of them oppression.
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,
that my talk about the burning and the looting them. I talk about the smashing and the grub in them.
I tell them about the vanquished and the victory inside the bubble and then went too far.
So we had was born to care and went on to get married.
But what now? So it goes some time in our star now.
So it goes some time in our themselves. Burrendong the judgement call upon the landlord with Bundalong.
The judge will never be the landlord when we run riot all of our Brixton when we must plan to police vun.
When we mash up the wicked one plan.
When we mash up this one, the one themselves we commandeer on ammunition with bill, we buy a kid and we could get Jefferey.
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.
One gang or plan go into action. What the plastic bullets and the water cannon will bring up them will bring up never mind.
Scarman will bring up dumdum.
Scarman, of course, was Lord Scarman, who was appointed to conduct an enquiry into the circumstances or the causes of the uprisings.
But, you know. Looking back on those days, I'm thinking, I think to myself sometimes, my God.
We came here from the British colonies as British colonial subjects,
and we had to resort to riots and insurrections and uprisings simply in order to integrate ourselves into British society.
Um. Windrush.
The Empire Windrush, the Windrush generation and all that, this is a poem, a stocktaking poem about the post Windrush generations.
It really is asking the question, really basically asking the question, how far?
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?
Things and times don't. Doped, demoralised.
This kid did. Traumatised.
Blinded by resplendent light of love, dazzled by the firmament of freedom,
you couldn't detect the sea when it kicking in m. teeth, it couldn't cry corruption and believe in Amun.
You never know about Cleek did Home-building did make it, you never know.
Intrigue, never in the league. It never did understand that on the road to socialism, you could back up nepotism and wife.
Dangerous, inbred, treacherous, unimposing, very vicious.
Duped. Daubert. Demoralised.
This is the. This is the. Traumatised.
No, like a fragile fragment of light trapped in the belly of the dark night, like a blind man,
stupefied and dazed, last stand alone in a mystical me as the doors open, doors open, doors, open doors.
Watch him drifting across the ocean of life without an rudder hung on RCL Phidias, open doors, open doors, open doors, call him flushed.
Some of the tides of the times, if you like, lost in the labyrinth of life.
If you like. Duped.
Duop. Demoralised. This is.
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.
Not so certain. Not so sure like before. The ADC, Bundy's son, I would give it back.
If it could cry the soul, not the surge that you see on with the sweet bamboo trees and membranes,
just Artecoll cannot touch no overnight like them desperate deeds of defiance when young rebels did a fight against oppression,
when young rebels did a fleeing firebomb, when they march with them.
Banas rheostat. Chanting Freedom. Chanting justice.
Chanting blood on fire. When a crucial trial was I believe is.
Taking the struggle to a higher stage. Duped, duped.
Demoralised. This it.
Dónde? Paralysed.
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.
Oh some sell them suel some get left out in the corner, some get Olivia, some get depreciate, some turn middle class, some again.
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.
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.
Duped. About. Demoralised.
This is the. Traumatised.
No wonder in pondering, considering pausing all kind of riddle to himself, like.
No doubt will come out of the one room them. OnTime unfortune been some of her friends know that we got bitcoins,
the flat and with decided with that we're colour TV and the mud can no doubt recreate some Speace and no one else.
Please note that we got. No doubt we got MP and GOP duck spun the radio bloc,
spun TV with Sir Unwieldly m b e I forgot we forgot our not do we need another Moses paetec
across the sea and said one Whitecross when a free free as we enter the 21st century.
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.
Well, it was wanderin pondering, considering when you hear a voice like the wind say.
To adjust things on times one dozen signs, but not get Mistick be realistic.
And your next voice, like the sea, sir.
Sometimes the pungent odour of the key signals that run your life upon the way you want to do some talking now.
Yeah, so, um, before I just let you lead the conversation between you two, I have a question for both of you.
Um, you already said, uh,
spoke about sort of being a part of a generation and the Windrush generation versus the post Windrush generations and kind of different experiences.
I kind of wonder, do you to consider yourself a part of the same generation?
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?
Right. Yeah. OK, what do you want to go. Are you going. Well, I was inside the rainbow on boy.
I was I was inside the rainbow that.
No, it's on. OK, how do you turn it off.
OK. So I thought I was inside the rainbow that night.
And came out and the glass was broken, the blood was all over the pavement,
so I would think we were in the same generation, although it's a little bit older than.
So but I remember that the reason I say why I got that book still and I'm not I'm not you know,
I'm not prostrating myself or anything, but that book changed my life.
I have to say it changed my life. And I went to the bookshop and I bought that book immediately,
was published and I opened it and I saw some I learnt something historical about myself, my experience, those of my friends.
And I looked on the page and it said, the mighty poet I Roy was on the words.
And that for me was just one. There are things like that in that book.
And it released something in me that enabled me to understand my situation better.
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.
We we you know, we ran from the police, we fought the police who were chase.
We ran for our lives. You know, obviously, Linton's already mentioned the.
The. New cross, the black representation of 1981 is again a very formative moment,
very important moment for this country and for all of us in our generation.
And I think I you say you didn't know the black people wrote books.
I mean, I'm sort of interested in how I did because my mom was a writer.
So I knew that that was going on. And Warmsley used to used to ring up and most of my mother's editors.
So I used to answer the phone to and so I knew there was something going on.
And I feel that what's interesting about the generational question for me is how we fill in the space
between the Caribbean artist movement and the and the and the generational voice that you present,
actually. And there is a story there because you mentioned Andrew selkies importance, for example.
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.
So I think we are part of a generation, but it's a generation that lives its life politically,
culturally, historically in relation to what went before.
And I think that distinction between the heroic generation and the rebel generation captures that switch for me.
I forgot. I've forgotten the question. Now what?
Same generation, same same generation, I always saw myself as being a part of the second generation because,
you know, I came here as a boy in 1963 at the age of 11.
And so my my parents were first generation, even though we came within three years of each other.
You know, I always see them as the first generation and my my generation of the second generation and.
I don't want to give the impression that the heroic generation that's the so-called Windrush generation
were passive because they weren't they did what they could to combat racism in their own way,
but they they were limited in what they could do because they had responsibilities.
You know, they had families to look after and they had considerations about sending money to their families in the Caribbean.
But they did what they could.
I mean, during the Notting Hill riots of 1958 and the Nottingham riots of nineteen fifty nine, they fought physically, fought the fascists.
And they. Build organisations.
Like the West Indian and West Indian Standard Conference conferences that was called West Indian Stand Conference, but,
you know, my generation, we kind of felt that there were organisations like the West Indian Standing Conference where were.
Not exactly Uncle Tommy show, but, you know, this kind of cap in hand appealing to authorities,
I don't think we we our solution was to organise, organise, agitate and organise.
And that's precisely what we did. We built autonomous organisations like the Black Panther movement, like the black community,
the Freedom Party and other organisations up and down the country.
And back in those days, we were influenced by the black power movement in the United States.
And our slogan like their slogan was Black Power, People's Power.
We weren't separatists. We weren't black nationalists.
Personally speaking, in the black in the Black Panthers, our people, the ideas of people like CNR James were very important.
We studied the Black Jacobins, we studied Eric Williams is capitalism and slavery.
We studied EBP, Thomsons, the making of the English working class and so on.
But my generation was, let's put it this way,
unfettered in the way that my parents weren't because we had we didn't have the kind of considerations that our
parents had because you couldn't simply down your tools or walk off a job every time you were racially abused.
And a lot of that was going on at the time and they had to put up with a lot of things.
I think one thing that distinguishes us is that I was born here and you came here as a child.
And I think that if you want to look at the history of the movement in a detail,
that becomes something that you can read off the surface of what transpired.
I was I was thinking also about that generation and about.
About the characteristics of that generation that your poetry points to, and that is that the rebel generation has in a sense.
A whole explosion of musical and literary activism across the Atlantic, well, in Jamaica,
of course, there's that incredible 10 year period from 1971 through to 1980.
But the period that gives us reggae, actually, because it's blue beat, it's other things before that, ska is before that.
So reggae is there.
And then, of course, an amazing fertility and amazing richness of musical culture that travels all across with soul and with jazz as well.
This extraordinary musical fertility,
which feeds a kind of self-consciousness in that generation in the blues dance and beyond date with pirate radio,
with a whole a whole repertory things in in every club, its room, in every shop.
London used to be populated with with record shops.
And they weren't just places of consuming things.
They were places of education, places of a kind of hidden,
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.
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.
They were like little churches.
I would say there's a certain quality of reverence and spiritual nourishment which is also transacted in that relationship with sound.
So I think that this rebel generation draws on that incredible creative
explosion in the music during the same period when reggae reggae music was very,
very important in my formation as a poet.
I mean, I didn't I didn't set out to become a reggae recording artist.
Reggae, whenever I was writing reggae, kept on creeping into my verse in terms of the bass lines.
And I was very much influenced by dub music, which was a mix long form of reggae,
just the drummer and the bass, which was the vehicle for the Jamaican reggae deejays like the mighty IRA.
You mentioned Big Youth, you, Roy and others.
And that kind of pointed me in the direction I wanted to go.
I mean, of course, I was listening to stuff, but the last voice of America as well, who were doing reciting African American poetry,
using the everyday spoken language of African Americans as a as a valid vehicle for poetic discourse.
And so reggae was crucial in my formation, not only in terms of influencing the kind of verse that I ended up writing,
but in terms of my identity, because reggae music was the nexus, if you like, of a subculture of resistance and you know.
Moreover, it acted as a kind of an umbilical cord that kept us connected to Jamaica, the Jamaica that we had left behind.
Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting that you say that because, I mean,
I'm not trying to turn you back from a poet into a sociologist or anything like that.
But obviously, in 1976, when you published that piece on Jamaican rebel music in race and class,
that was another light bulb moment for me because I had never seen anything like that.
I didn't think anyone had written anything like that before. So whatever you feel about its limitations, it was a landmark publication.
And people still now they still turn to it or really to look for elements of history.
They do. Yes, they do.
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,
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.
So I think one thing we can do here is to try and recover the richness of that cultural moment,
because it's almost as though there's calm and then there's later on Creation for Liberation and the book fair.
But there's a sort of space in between.
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.
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?
I think in that sense. I mean, maybe people, especially younger people,
don't know that there was ever such a place as the Cascadia Centre that it played
a role in your development as a poet in the literary and cultural life of London.
And to, you know, kids like myself, this was a very rich opportunity to hear the culture live,
where the Cascadia cascade was one of the first places that I was able to.
Recite my poems, because before that, I used to recite my poems at the local youth club and, you know,
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.
So when I left university, by the way, that paper.
What's it called again? I don't rebel rebel music, Jamaican well, yeah, that came out of my dissertation.
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.
The Cascadia Centre was an important cultural centre for black people in London.
It was unique insofar as everything happened there. There were poetry readings.
It was the it was the home of black theatre in England.
All the theatrical productions went on there. We had novels, people reading from the novels and poetry.
Talks, lectures, it was a youth club going on downstairs,
it was a place for artists like Emmanuel Jugada the sculptor and painter, people like Ara Lloyd, another painter.
And I can you imagine me as a young aspiring poet being in the presence of these great people from the Caribbean,
these writers, you know, like George Lumin, the barbarian novelists.
I remember I think it must have been about nineteen seventy three.
I was trying out some of the early poems from Drumbeating and.
I was, you know. George Lemon was right in front of me, and he was he was like this.
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.
You said, No, man, he's just concentrating. Well, it was amazing, you know,
and I I feel privileged to have been a part of that because the Caribbean
artist movement used to hold some of its activities that the Cascadia Centre,
another base for the Caribbean artist movement, was the West Indian Student Centre in Earls Court, West London.
And as I said, I feel really privileged not only to have had mentors like John Leros.
And understand, um, but to have been part of the the dying moments of the Caribbean artist movement.
Um, yeah. And actually alongside those hidden spaces for performance and conversation, there's also a print culture, too.
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.
But where where is the first place you had the poems printed?
Do you remember where that was? The first poem I ever had published was in 1973, and it was in Restrainers in Macedonia.
That was when Restudy the magazine. Rastetter was part of the Institute of Race Relations.
But of course. With the connivance of LaRue's, Darcus,
Howe and other and some other people raised to the magazine was hijacked from the Institute of
Race Relations and brought to Rixton and set up as an independent journal for the black community.
An international journal put an international focus. What?
Yeah, and Jamaican wrote the music. It was published in Race and Class and.
I don't know how I met Ricky Cambridge.
Cecil got Moore and Colin, Colin Prescott, these are the guys who was running this magazine, this journal called The Black Liberator,
and they kindly published another version of that Jamaican rebel music called The Politics of Reggae Lyricism,
which was like a kind of close reading of of of of the lyrics of the lyricism of the time.
But to be honest with you, Paul, I found that journal unintelligible because it was all this kind of structuralism,
Marxist structuralism, although I can't even remember the name of the series, the most of it that I couldn't cope with.
But it was a good looking magazine because they used to publish photographs of people like Lance Watson and other poets as well,
whose work they said they interspersed the overdoses of Maoist theory, mostly mastery with with they lighten the load Maoist Maoists.
Yeah. Yeah. People thought it was cool. Yeah.
I mean, I think it's really important not to take for granted the fact that people don't know this history.
And if you want to find it, you won't find it on the Internet people.
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.
You won't find the story of these other organisations.
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.
Somehow Ricky lives in Oxford, so they might well be here.
But but I mean, just to put your hands on these things and a, Warick has a set, I think work,
as I said, but it's very, very, very, very important to handle these things and see, you know,
in the in the frictionless world we inhabit to see what went into the production of these objects, these text that could travel,
these magazines, these discussions, the publishing, small magazine publishing is very, very important to recover.
This is not just something we associate with the life of the black arts movement in the United States,
but actually here we have a version of all of that to tell you where sorry.
I tell you where you can find this kind of stuff. All this information is that the George Padmore Institute in London,
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.
We have an archive of material going back 50 years or more which documents our struggles, you know,
all the various movements, cultural and political movements from the fifties coming right down now.
And you can check us out on the on the Internet, Google George Padmore Institute.
You'll find this. And it's a research centre and an archive.
I mean, we have students coming from as far away as the United States to study at the.
Now, on this, I think it says on this post, we've got the reading based culture, reading based culture,
and I think I thought we ought to talk a little bit about base, you know, and if you like the politics of frequency.
When we met to talk about how to have this conversation a few weeks ago now, I said to him, well,
I thought I always thought there was an echo of Ralph Ellison's on the lower frequencies I speak for you.
That was part of the base culture. But he told me that that's not where it had come from.
That made it more interesting in a way that these things that the attention to those frequencies,
which are actually, I must say, in our era, a bit different to what they've become in the era of the subwoofer.
I know that what happens below 50 hertz can become a very esoteric consideration of interest only to people who play the bass.
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.
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.
And he did that long before the well, the music became explicit or a music became explicit.
So I'm interested in that shift from music that is implied in the poetry to music, which is explicitly heard with the poetry.
And I'm interested to know how the bass fits into that, because I believe you.
You dabble a bit in that area. Yeah, I mean, I play a bit of bass, not professionally.
Most people involved in music, composing a guitar or on a piano are composed with a bass.
I always begin everything with the bass line and.
I guess as a poet, I've always been interested in the language, the music in language, the musicality of speech and.
When I began to write verse in in the Jamaican vernacular or Jamaican language.
Base, I was here in the base, in the background, and I wanted I wanted to I want I was aspiring towards.
Towards a kind of a musicality that was.
In the language itself, I wanted to write.
I wanted to write language that sounded like a bass line and and basically that was my approach to to write in verse,
the one drop of reggae was a way of of of.
Working out my midterm, my metrical symmetrical shape of the of the poem,
I remember one time I heard Amiri Baraka, the American African-American poet, say that the blues,
when he when he began to write verse the blues, was very important in his formation and especially the talking blues,
where people would be talking the words instead of singing them.
And that I could relate to that because I had the same experience, you know, and I guess.
Also listening to the last points on and hearing oral oral poetry,
basically accompanied by percussion and then listening to the Jamaican reggae deejays were basically improvising,
although they weren't talking, they were more or less chanting or.
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.
I wanted to do poetry that sounded like music.
And that has been my basic approach. That's been my aesthetic, you know.
But how did that did that change the way you performed the poetry?
Because obviously, if you're standing in front of a band, people think of you as a singer rather than a poet.
Well, yes. Yes. And it has always been.
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,
I've learnt to recite these poems properly because when I used to recite them in the beginning.
There was too much there was too much internation, you know, to.
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.
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.
But if I have to choose between reciting poetry unaccompanied and playing with a band, I would choose reciting poetry on its own.
I couldn't earn a living from that. But, you know, when I was asking you about your influences, our conversation included,
that is to hope you don't mind me saying this, that you had at one point.
Imagine that you might make a recording of the Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock with a with a suitable and a suitable reggae accompaniment and framing.
And I that interested me very much because I'd always imagined that there were
certain things in your poetry where you registering the influence of Elliott.
So it's very interesting to me that you said actually that wasn't the case and Elliott had come
into your poetic imagination via Christopher Christopher Columbus was influenced by T.S. Eliot.
When I first came across the work of Christopher Kimball through my mentor John Leros, he introduced me to the work of Christopher.
And I love this poetry, you know,
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.
But later on, I began to read English poetry because for a time when I first became interested in verse poetry,
I've mostly read Caribbean poets, I read the African poets, poets of Negritude, African-American poets, Caribbean poets.
And then I began to branch out a bit wider. And then I realised that there was.
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.
And I did do a rendition of it at a recording studio in Switzerland.
I was there and I had some time to kill and I composed the best.
I composed the bass line to go with it. And I think it worked.
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.
Is that the answer was no, basically, yeah.
What's also really striking to me is how important the environment that was created around the International Book Fair, Black,
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.
I'm thinking of Jane Cortez and thinking also of Michael Smith, because Linton,
in conjunction with Dennis Bovell, produced an extraordinary rich and amazing.
I don't think he's probably in Japan. You can buy it, but you can't get it anywhere else.
Bye bye, Mikey Smith. So I think that was a place where different poets and different forms of poetry and
a struggle over the relationship between sound and words was being played with.
And that was a very nourishing and and useful space that you all created.
I think the book by Roxy Harris and Margaret Busby is a fantastic account of all of that project.
But I guess Roxanne Harris, Sarah Wilde and John Shamila, I'm so sorry.
I don't know where it is, but I can't remember the details on their own.
Please forgive me for that. That that is such a resource.
That book is such an extraordinary resource. It's so valuable and so important.
And I guess I'd say you can't really understand the cultural life of of of London and
perhaps of this country without really reckoning with with the space that was created there.
Well, you know, I was one of the organisers, as you know, of the International Book Fair of Radical Black on Third World Books,
which was organised jointly in the beginning by New Beacon Books, Bhogle Overture and Race Today publications.
And then after some years after Bogdanovich dropped out and it was released today and and New Beacon and then race today dropped out.
And then it was a new beacon, basically. And J Records, which is my record company, the book fair was.
It ran from 1982 to 1995, and it was not just simply a marketplace for books of interest to black people,
it was a meeting of continents, which is what that book was called, a meeting of continents.
People came from Africa, from the United States, from the Caribbean and from other parts of Europe and so on.
And we had these forums where we discussed the burning topics of the day.
Politics to do with politics, culture, there was there were film shows, there was theatrical productions, poetry readings and so on and so forth.
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.
And even nowadays I go to if I go to America, I'm I'm in New York.
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.
But like most things, I think it outlived its own success. It was you know, it outlived its own.
It was a victim of its own success. I mean, we discussed topics.
Can you imagine as far back as the 1980s, we were discussing things like the revolution in new technology.
You know, back in those days,
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,
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.
We welcome the revolution in new technology because it could provide the basis for full employment in modern developed societies.
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.
Well, that brings us to where we are. And I wonder how you feel about the situation that we're in, because, you know,
we talk about the sufferings of the heroic generation that we talked about, the sufferings of the rebel generation.
And obviously recently, as we all know, the rebel generation is being shafted a second time over.
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,
down the road, things and things in time, how, how how would you answer that question today?
I don't know if I if I if indeed I have an answer.
I would say that, as I said earlier, that we, you know, we built our autonomous institutions, political, social and cultural.
We organised, we agitated, we propagandised, we demonstrated, and we are insurrections and uprisings and eventually.
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.
There was something was keeping us back from integrating.
It was nothing that, you know, people it's not as though that people didn't want us to integrate.
You know, I mean, a family would buy a house on a street where there's only white people living.
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.
So, yes, we've made some progress over the decades.
When I was a youngster growing up, black people were marginalised. We were on the periphery of British society.
We were treated like third class citizens. No, we are slightly closer to the centre.
We've made some progress. We've we've got a black middle class.
We have a voice in the houses of parliament, which we didn't have before, and so on and so forth.
But some things that some things haven't changed at all.
And we still have a long way to go in our struggle for racial equality and social justice.
This younger generation, they have to take up the mantle and take the struggles forward.
You know, and I'm glad that I see signs of the politicisation of young black people in this country now largely inspired,
I guess, by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States of America.
But. The thing that troubles me most, the things that worries me most, Paul,
is the fact that the protracted war of attrition against young black people is still being waged by the police.
You know that that troubles me. That's true, and it troubles me, it troubles me as well.
I know you're not keen on the Internet. Well, it's just the computer illiterate that I do.
I wonder, too, about the effects of moving from a political culture which is offline to a political culture which is largely conducted online,
and that allows people to kind of luxuriate in the fantasy that we will proceed as though we were living in the United States.
And that, too, seems to be a worrying thing because there can't be a generic identity.
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.
We didn't imagine we were everywhere, whether everywhere was the same.
There were sticky, intractable local factors that shape the way we thought about our lives and the possibility of a future.
And I think now if people if people give in to the fantasy that everything that's going on here is the
same as what they think is going on the United States via the portal that the computer provides them,
we're in a big, big mess. Well, on that note, I'm looking at the clock.
Yeah, I think it's about time I started a couple more portable. Um.
You know, we were just talking about the revolution in new technology and all that.
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.
And I caught it more time. We're marching all towards the new century, armed with the new technology,
we're getting more and more productivity, some things looking up for prosperity.
But if everyone go and get a share, this time with mentality must get left behind.
We want the show to work in again with the shorter working week longer already.
We need decent pay, more time for leisure, more time for pleasure, more time for edification,
more time for recreation, more time to contemplate, more time through, many more time to really it.
More time. We need more time. Give it more time.
A full time them abolish unemployment and revolutionised Labour deployment of full time, then banish overtime, make everybody get to work.
This time we need a higher quality of liberty.
We need it. No one, everybody. We want to show up to work in a year with the shorter work life.
More time for the husband, more time for the wife, more time for the children, more time for your friend.
The more time committed to it. More time to create. More time to live in, more time for life, more time.
We need more time. Give me more time. Towards the end of the 1980s and in the early 90s.
There were a number of atrocities. Committed in Eastern Europe.
In Eastern Africa. And parts of the Middle East.
And. That was around the time that the term ethnic cleansing.
Gained currency as a way of speaking about these acts of barbarism.
And. Personally, I don't like this term ethnic cleansing.
Because it presupposes to my simple, naive way of thinking, it presupposes the notion.
Of ethnic pollution. And once one begin to think along those kind of lines, you end up with.
You know, like what they had during the last World War, the Holocaust and stuff like that.
We need to be careful about how we use language because we not only negotiate our everyday reality through language,
more importantly, we define our humanity through language.
And for me, this term, ethnic cleansing.
Is represents the dehumanisation of language and the language of dehumanisation.
So I wrote this poem about it called New World Order.
The killers are Kigali must be sanitary workers, the butchers abattoir, it must be sanitary workers, the savages of Chatila must be sanitary workers.
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,
the all the unravel and reveal will scare just broke out in a new sewer primaeval one that time will heal.
And in the ancient currency of blader, trade by the tyrants Asika will score.
The killers are God, they must be sanitary workers, the butchers arbitrary must be sanitary workers.
The savages of Chatila must be sanitary workers. The beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers.
You know, the new world order, and it's the same or key in uneatable syndrome, far more urgent than the fall of Rome,
but in the new world of atrocity is a brand new language of barbarity, mass murder,
normalise pogrom, rationalise genocide, sanitise an ancient clan sin, no Niam ethnic cleansing.
And so the killers are to God, it must be sanitary workers. The butchers arbitrary must be sanitary workers.
The savages of Chatila must be sanitary workers. The beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers.
pre-programme problem is the new world order.
Um, I was. Inspired to write a poem.
About black deaths in police custody because of an ongoing campaign that's been waged from the 90s onwards.
About the. Disproportionate number of black people dying in police custody and as far as I know,
there's never been any successful prosecutions of police officers for those deaths.
And it seemed to me at the time I was right in the point that there was a kind of a conspiracy,
a conspiracy of silence by those in authorities about these deaths in custody, in police custody.
So I wrote this poem called Licence to Kill is a conversation between two workers in a factory that goes like this,
sometimes hitting the co-worker crazy. Do you, Christine, with a gun joke, a joke the next time?
No, a no nonsense stance. Do we issue Wendong, the Prius,
last Christmas dance that we should love it both conspiracy me and in the county not
talk about the death of black people in our custody or not a Miyo Narad them dog bark?
Oh, nobody, Eyüp, in our society can offer explanation.
No remedy. When Christina topower bro like zero zero screw up our fears like a bigotry is here are no.
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.
Winston Salem police in England got a licence to kill.
Well, not in Christine's surprise. What but you, Yamano.
Well, you mean, Christine, I would tell you that unless you are idiot, you can prove that.
I would tell them if they go said that Christine Kissa, then she cut me with diarrhoea and she said, You are improve.
You can ask Clinton kerb in Baltimore, asphyxiation on your car, knocks dryer.
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.
But you can ask the commissioner about the licence. Fickell occiput Kendon the licence to kill your Kanaks.
The dog lets them both. Then you stand button on your car.
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.
But you can ask them Barbara what the licence Fickell the DP.
But the licence to kill your Kanaks Ibraheem about the iest gas attack your car knocks Mrs. Jerrett Oh should get their heart attack.
Your Kanaks only have a price the grip. Rohan Gymnich and your Karnac Steve Boice bought him dead by neglect.
What you Kanaks the past year both the licence to kill Sepo, both the licence Fishkin Yosfiah Margaret Thatcher.
Both the licence fee König Kanaks John Major the licence to kill your fiance Michael Howard bought the licence fee and you,
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.
Please feel them gut. Sometimes the co-worker crazy the way Christine, with that one joke, the joke the next time, no,
I know nuns and stunts that we should wendong the place last Christmas dance, the creation of a tugboat conspiracy.
And finally. I'd like to do a poem.
About poetry and. Some years ago, somebody brought it to my attention that my name was in the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry.
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.
And I said, well, this sounds like a nice little sound bite,
but really I can't ignore it because my name has been associated with this so-called poetry.
So by way of riposte, I wrote this piece and I begin with a little quotation from.
Bongo, Jerry. What a line in one of his poems that went most of the straightening is in the tongue.
So by way of repassed, this is my piece called If I was a top notch poet,
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.
Like a precious memory would make you weep, would make you feel incomplete,
like when your lover leave under the feet, you can see still your big on your plea till you win.
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.
One sense of time. One positive step in line, Buthelezi, my Caputo's on what, Monday?
Lafi Thousands are thousands and thousands and thousands.
If I was a top notch poet like Cummo, Brathwaite, Martin Carter and Catanzaro, Amiri Baraka.
I would write a poem so rude and rude, Cihan subversive that they go and put it on white with envy like a condom,
black voodoo coming John Time CALIPSO amorously of song, not get burned, but from Grunty right down to Grand Pickney.
Each and everyone can recite that one. Still in the mean time.
With my rhythm, with my rhyme, with my best line. With me. One sense a time.
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.
If I was a top notch poet like Choucair your thumbs.
Nicholas Gwinn are allowing a Goodison.
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,
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,
fleeting hint of authenticity like a black Lance Percival in reverse or even worse, a bumbling buffoon when it was him tongue.
No, sir, not at all. Maybe the mirror mirror of Bistline got one since our time.
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.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Andrea. Well, I'm sure we could go on listening to this fascinating history that's been narrated for us this evening,
but it's time to close and to have some refreshment.
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.
You're very, very welcome. And there's also both Paul Gilroy and Lyndon Johnson's books are on sale.
And you can have your book signed by the writers on the spot and and continue the chat one on one.
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.
This has been a historical occasion that we have all been participating in at a time when the Britishness
of the Windrush generation and those who came after them has shamefully been called into question.
How significant has been to recognise the Britishness and worldliness of Linton Kwesi Johnson's
poetry and in conversation with the very significant theorist of black Atlantic culture?
Paul Gilroy. It's also been fabulous to see Luisa Lahn chair and indeed compare this session.
She has been absolutely instrumental from the beginning in bringing this event together.
So very, very warm thanks to her. Thank you.
To the torch team, to the English faculty for helping with the staging and the organisation of this event.
Many thanks to the John Fell fund for funding it, thanks to Erika Lombards,
who couldn't be here this evening for the wonderful poster that that has that has accompanied the event.
And then finally, I hope you can all join me putting our hands together in one drop beat.
And I just say a thank you to Louisa for doing me the honour of writing your thesis on.
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,
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,
because where we are today, it's all in your book after Empire.
Thank you. And thank you so much to Clinton himself, Robert.