Now, who’s this poet who’s quoted to have said “I can’t say anything about the rules of poetry because I’ve broken them all”? Who’s this man who, in spite of such cheek, received an honorary doctorate from the University of North London in 1998 and has been short-listed for poetry fellowships at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge?

Born in Birmingham, England in 1958, Zephaniah spent some of his early years in Jamaica, his parents’ homeland, where he was strongly influenced by Jamaican folk music. Back in England, he had a difficult school life. He was expelled from several schools, got into trouble with the police, was sent to a reform school and ended up in prison for burglary. Prison proved to be a turning point in his life. It was there that, as he says, he decided to use his energy differently and to educate himself. After his release, he enrolled in Adult Education and learnt to read and write well, which he hadn’t been able to do earlier, owing to his dyslexia.

Since the age of 22, he’s been writing, publishing and mostly “performing” his poetry in tours all over the world, performances which combine recitation with reggae rhythm. He’s also written novels, plays and TV scripts. He now devotes much of his time to visiting schools, prisons, universities and teacher training centres.

Zephaniah’s not a lone figure in Britain’s poetic environment: Wendy Cope, Roger Mc Gough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, to mention but a few, have also done much to popularise the genre by making it accessible to people at large and by taking special care of new readers: children and adolescents.

However, Zephaniah’s is a different case. Either intuitively or rationally, he seems to have grasped that in a world that’s turned audiovisual, oral or performance poetry can again become as popular as it was in the bygone days of scops and bards. That’s why he’s taken up the mission of touring the world to give readings of his poems at schools, colleges, youth clubs, prisons, theatres and music venues. He does this in the hope that young people will realize that poetry nowadays entails sharing the thoughts and feelings both of rock singers in concerts and of poets in readings.

Apart from this, the broadness of Zephaniah’s poetic output shows us that, to him, all the subgenres within the realm of poetry are worthy of the same care and respect. He seems to enjoy writing children’s poetry, parodies and nonsense poetry as much as the very serious and intense poetry on social injustice in Too Black, Too Strong.

To would-be poets, reading Zephaniah has a liberating effect: there’s no “inappropriate” style for poetry. Zephaniah teaches us that languages are versatile tools, that we can play with words, twist them to our convenience and forge new ones when necessary. As he says in the dedication in Talking Turkeys:

I write poems for you

And I hope that one day

You will write poems for me.

Read on and write soon.

For further information on Benjamin Zephaniah, consult his web site at www.benjaminzephaniah.com. You will also find a full entry in www.contemporarywriters.com

Benjamin Zephaniah's performances

Zephaniah is definitely a poet to be seen and heard rather than one to be read. Though of medium height, Zephaniah fills an auditorium with his presence as soon as he comes in: dreadlocks down to his waist, a feline gait, gleaming eyes and a smile which can be all tenderness at one moment and all mischief at another. The recital of his poetry, akin to a rap chant, has a hypnotic effect on his listeners. Spellbound, you listen to poem after poem, most of which are of a political nature, but never aggressive.

Benjamin Zephaniah in Argentina

Zephaniah has visited Argentina three times and performed at the Buenos Aires Book Fair in April 2000. In 2002 he performed at Malba (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires – Colección Costantini) and in Córdoba for teachers and learners of English.