Now 70, Linton Kwesi Johnson, AKA LKJ, doesn’t age; he just gets more LKJish. His signature look – the neat, triangular goatee, jacket, tie and trilby – hasn’t changed. Nor has his poetry aged, whether on the page or stage, and best performed by the man himself, his deep Jamaican voice infused with gravitas. An innate musicality has always carried the rhyme and rhythm of his work.
In his new book, LKJ writes without false modesty that, looking back, he sometimes finds his feat of straddling poetry and music “astounding”. Born in Jamaica and since 1963 based in London, he is renowned for anthemic reggae poems such as Inglan Is a Bitch. But this is a collection of prose, not poetry – reflections drawn from lectures, newspapers and journals on subjects ranging from the New Cross fire (or New Craas Massakah, as his poem called it) to the limits of Bob Marley’s genius.
