A01=David Austin
Africa
Aime Cesaire
Alain Badiou
Alienation
Apartheid
Author_David Austin
Babylon
Bible
Bob Marley
Brixton
C. L. R. James
Capitalism
Caribbean
Category=DSBH
Category=DSC
class
d'bi young Anitafrika
dialectic
dread
dub poetry
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Frantz Fanon
gender
Jamaica
Kamau Brathwaite
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Louise Bennett
Marxism
poetry
Race Today
Rasta
slavery
Product details
- ISBN 9780745338149
- Weight: 538g
- Dimensions: 135 x 215mm
- Publication Date: 20 Oct 2018
- Publisher: Pluto Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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What is the relationship between poetry and social change?
Standing at the forefront of political poetry since the 1970s, Linton Kwesi Johnson has been fighting neo-fascism, police violence and promoting socialism while putting pen to paper to refute W.H. Auden's claim that 'poetry makes nothing happen'. For Johnson, only the second living poet to have been published in the Penguin Modern Classics series, writing has always been 'a political act' and poetry 'a cultural weapon'.
In Dread Poetry and Freedom - the first book dedicated to the work of this 'political poet par excellence' - David Austin explores the themes of poetry, political consciousness and social transformation through the prism of Johnson's work. Drawing from the Bible, reggae and Rastafari, and surrealism, socialism and feminism, and in dialogue with Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney, and W.E.B. Du Bois and the poetry of d'bi young anitafrika, Johnson's work becomes a crucial point of reflection on the meaning of freedom in this masterful and rich study.
In the process, Austin demonstrates why art, and particularly poetry, is a vital part of our efforts to achieve genuine social change in times of dread.
Standing at the forefront of political poetry since the 1970s, Linton Kwesi Johnson has been fighting neo-fascism, police violence and promoting socialism while putting pen to paper to refute W.H. Auden's claim that 'poetry makes nothing happen'. For Johnson, only the second living poet to have been published in the Penguin Modern Classics series, writing has always been 'a political act' and poetry 'a cultural weapon'.
In Dread Poetry and Freedom - the first book dedicated to the work of this 'political poet par excellence' - David Austin explores the themes of poetry, political consciousness and social transformation through the prism of Johnson's work. Drawing from the Bible, reggae and Rastafari, and surrealism, socialism and feminism, and in dialogue with Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James and Walter Rodney, and W.E.B. Du Bois and the poetry of d'bi young anitafrika, Johnson's work becomes a crucial point of reflection on the meaning of freedom in this masterful and rich study.
In the process, Austin demonstrates why art, and particularly poetry, is a vital part of our efforts to achieve genuine social change in times of dread.
David Austin is the author of Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution (Pluto, 2018) and the editor of Moving Against the System, The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness (Pluto, 2018). He is the winner of the 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize.
