IF I WOZ A TAP-NATCH POET

LINTON KWESI JOHNSON


“dub poetry has been described as...‘over-compensation for deprivation’”
Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry

“mostofthestraighteningisinthetongue”
—Bongo Jerry

"...if I woz a tap-natch poet
like Kamau Brathwaite
Martin Carter
Jayne Cortez ar Amiri Baraka

I woodah write a poem 
soh rude
an rootsy
an subversive
dat it mek di goon poet
tun white wid envy

like a candhumble/ voodoo/ kumina chant
a ole time calypso ar a slave song
dat get ban
but fram granny
                           rite
                           dung
                           to
                           gran
                           pickney
each an evry wan
can recite dat-deh wan

still
inna di meantime
wid mi riddim
wid mi rime
wid mi ruff base line
wid mi own sense a time..."

Linton Kwesi Johnson is a Jamaican poet, journalist, recording artist, and author based in England. He is widely considered to be the father of reggae dub poetry, a precursor to rap music.  His books include Voices of the Living and the Dead (1974), Dread, Beat an' Blood (1975) and Inglan Is a Bitch (1980). In 2002, Johnson became the first black poet and the second living poet to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. In 2005, he received a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica for distinguished eminence in the field of poetry.  This poem is from Mi Revalueshanery Fren (2006).