Born in Jamaica, he came to London in 1963; eventually studying Sociology at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London. Whilst still at school he joined the Black Panthers, helped to organise a poetry workshop within the movement and developed his work with Rasta Love, a group of poets and drummers.
In 1977 he was awarded a C Day Lewis Fellowship, becoming the writer-in-residence for the London Borough of Lambeth for that year. He went on to work as the Library Resources and Education Officer at the Keskidee Centre, the first home of Black theatre and art.
Kwesi Johnson can be said to be the most significant Jamaican poet writing in the UK because his verse is read and appreciated widely and far beyond the community it is initially grounded in. His poetry forms a valuable chronicle of Black working class life and the social injustices prevalent at the time. As social commentary, his work is a record of political reaction to repression when Black voices were simply not heard.
He was made Associate Fellow at Warwick University in 1985 and Honorary Fellow at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1987. He is a regular broadcaster on radio; he is also the second living and only Black poet to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series.
Biography from British Council.
Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon.
Linton Kwesi Johnson
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