His Poems:
Inglan Is a Bitch
Linton Kwesi Johnson states in a contexual document "...the
popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential
music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but
also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience,
that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual
expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican." The message
Johnson conveys in this quote can be seen through his poetry and heard
in his voice. In his poem, Five Nights of Bleeding, Johnson gives "spiritual
expression" to his work. He incorporaties his culture into the poem with
the form of language and dialect used, while at the same time, speaking
out about the opression and discrimination that his people have been subjected
to. Johnson quotes "That the language of the poetry of Jamaican music is
rastafarian or biblical language cannot simply be put down to the colonizer
and his satanic missionaries. The fact is that the historical experience
of the black Jamaican is a n experience of the most acute human suffering,
desolation and despair in the cruel world that is the colonial world..."
His Poems:
Inglan Is a Bitch
The New Empire Within Britain --by Salman Rushdie
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