17 Quotes by Linton Kwesi Johnson

I don't go to see bands any more because I've got tinnitus, so I have to avoid loud music. You get used to it, but when it's quiet you hear a constant ringing.

Younger people are discovering my work, even though my reggae is not like theirs.

That the language of the poetry of Jamaican music is rastafarian or biblical language cannot simply be put down to the colonizer and his satanic missionaries. The fact is that the historical experience of the black Jamaican is an experience of the most acute human suffering, desolation and despair in the cruel world that is the colonial world...

....the popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican.

Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon.

At the end of the day, life’s about realising one’s human potential. I don’t know if I’ve realised mine, but I’ve certainly gone a long way towards realising some goals and some dreams.

I don’t go to see bands any more because I’ve got tinnitus, so I have to avoid loud music. You get used to it, but when it’s quiet you hear a constant ringing.

I have never, ever sought validation from the arbiters of British poetic taste.