Mi Revalueshanary Fren. Linton Kwesi Johnson

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      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

       This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

       To my mother

      Contents

        Title Page

        Note to Reader

        Dedication

        Introduction by Russell Banks

       I. Five Nights of Bleeding—Seventies Verse

      1  Yout Scene

      2  Double Scank

      3  Dread Beat an Blood

      4  Five Nights of Bleeding

      5  Street 66

      6  All Wi Doin Is Defendin

      7  Bass Culture

      8  Reggae Sounds

      9  Come Wi Goh Dung Deh

      10  Song of Blood

      11  Yout Rebels

      12  Time Come

      13  It Dread inna Inglan

      14  Sonny’s Lettah

      15  It Noh Funny

      16  Want fi Goh Rave

      17  Reality Poem

      18  Forces of Victri

      19  Inglan Is a Bitch

       II. Mi Revalueshanary Fren—Eighties Verse

      1  Story

      2  Reggae fi Radni

      3  Reggae fi Dada

      4  New Craas Massakah

      5  Di Great Insohreckshan

      6  Beacon of Hope

      7  Mekin Histri

      8  Mi Revalueshanary Fren

      9  Sense Outta Nansense

      10  Di Good Life

      11  Tings an Times

       III. New Word Hawdah—Nineties Verse

      1  Seasons of the Heart

      2  Hurricane Blues

      3  More Time

      4  Reggae fi Bernard

      5  Reggae fi May Ayim

      6  If I Woz a Tap Natch Poet

      7  Liesense fi Kill

      8  New Word Hawdah

      9  BG (for Bernie Grant in memoriam, 1934–2000)

        Notes

        Copyright

        Special thanks

       by Russell Banks

      Take the title, Mi Revalueshanary Fren, and silently say it, and hear yourself saying it. Then open the book at random to any one of these extraordinary poems, and do the same. Say the poem, and hear yourself saying it. You’ll have answered the question that most contemporary English language readers, accustomed as they are to reading poetry strictly with their eyes instead of with their ears and mouths, might otherwise have shyly (or perhaps defensively) asked themselves, How best to read this work? The answer should be obvious, I suppose. For thousands of years human beings have best experienced poetry as song. What we happen to see printed on paper (or inscribed on vellum, papyrus or clay tablet) merely cues our ears and mouths, and if it’s good poetry, we hear music and sing a song not of our own making.

      More than nearly any other contemporary English-language poet (I’ll come back to that categorization in a moment), Linton Kwesi Johnson writes poems that make us sing with a voice that mingles our intimate

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