Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,” wrote Benjamin Zephaniah in a poem I know he’d be proud to learn made vegetarians out of hundreds of children across the UK. I say “wrote” but really, because of his extraordinarily warm readings, I bet more kids heard that line read aloud than read it themselves. Teachers pouncing on the chance to sell a poet who didn’t look or sound like a clichéd bard. “Look, kids!” I picture them saying. “Ben’s Black! He’s from Birmingham! He’s funny!” Today, heartbreakingly, he’s become one of the things kids do expect poets to be: dead.
According to most reports, Zephaniah was diagnosed with a brain tumour eight weeks ago, which is what seems to have killed him at age 65 . I think he’d thank me for not euphemising things. In a poem about the media, he asked readers: “How do you like your truth?/ Bite-sized in sound bites cut easy to chew, With a talking head saying the victim’s like you/ And when you’ve digested the horrors you’ve seen/ You find good, you find evil, and no in-between…” No. Zephaniah liked things clear. So, there: he’s dead.
