It was a mixture of the spoken word and lyrical chants from Linton Kwesi Johnson at the fundraising poetry recital, at Liberty Hall on Thursday evening, at the event dubbed Legacy of Garvey. The international poet had the fair-sized audience hanging on to his every word whether he was chanting poetry or sharing his philosophical position on life.

Johnson. black people have changed England and Jamaicans have made a significant contribution to that

The 'edutaining' programme was divided into three segments, first his performance from his collection of poems, then Johnson rapping with Dr Carolyn Cooper about his works and experiences at home and abroad, followed by a short stint of questions and answers.

One of the world's greatest reggae poets, Johnson warmed the hearts of the gathering with his collection of oral verses titled Mi Revalushanary Fren, beginning as he usually does with the poem, Five Nights of Bleeding.

One of his earliest attempts in trying to establish himself as a wordsmith of no mean order, Five Nights of Bleeding, describes a number of violent incidents occurring in various parts of London, in the early 1970s involving the black youths of his generation.

An ode to one Leroy Harris, who had his throat cut on the fourth of the five nights, it begins with the explosive cry:
Madness, madness tight on the heads
of the rebels,
the bitterness erupt like a hot blast.
Broke glass,
rituals of blood on the burning
serve by a cruel infighting.
Five nights
of horror and of bleeding....

From that alarming lamentation, Johnson segued into the moving Sonny's Letter, one of his best-known pieces. That poem is about someone writing home to his mother explaining why he and his brother are in prison.

Jim start to riddle
Di police dem
start to giggle
Mama mek a tell yuh
weh dem do to Jim
Mama mek a tell yuh
weh dem do to him
Dem thump him
in him belly
and it turn to jelly
Dem lick him pon
him back and
him ribs get pop
Dem lick him
pon his head
but it tuff like lead...

Then it was time for the melancholy-flavoured Reggae Fi Dadda, in homage to his departed father. Johnson not only captures the fondness he shared with his late dad, but revealed his coming to terms with the process of transition and what it meant for the old man in the context of how he (Kwesi Johnson) saw Jamaica at the time.

"This is a farewell poem to my father, and its about Jamaica really, during the early 1980s, as I saw Jamaica during my visits here:
"Galang dadda,
galang gwaan yah sah.
Yuh neva have no life to live
Just the one life to give
Yuh did yuh time pon earth
Yuh neva get yuh just desert
Galang goh
smile inna di sun
Galang go satta inna di palace
of peace...

And when
di news
reach mi, sey mi one
daddy dead, mi catch
a plane quick
And when mi reach
mi sunny isle, it was the
same ole style
di money-well dry
di bullet dem a fly
plenty innocent a die
many rivers dry
ganja plane fly high
Di poor man him a try
Yuh tink a likkle try him try...

Treating the audience with more spellbinding works like Things and Time, and Reggae Fi Mayayim. The latter being a eulogy to a lady friend who was a poet and activist of the Afro-Germany Movement and the Black Woman Movement based in Berlin, who jumped to her death from the 13th floor of a high-rise building when a doctor told her that she had multiple sclerosis.

After such absorbing word missiles, Linton Kwesi Johnson engaged in a short and lively conversation with Dr Cooper, during which he got a rousing applause when he said "black people have changed England and Jamaicans have made a significant contribution to that".

The recent recipent of a Silver Musgrave Medal, Johnson further credited the Jamaican novelists Andrew Salkey and John La Rose as his two mentors who helped him to discover a whole new world of poetry and black literature in general.

"But I was also influenced by what was happening in reggae music in Jamaica. When I heard Big Youth, when I heard U-Roy, Prince Jazzbo and these Jamaican deejays, for me it was a kind of poetry...oral poetry. And I also listened to the Last Poets and I thought that this is the kind of poetry I wanted to write. I was writing in English, and I began to experiment with the Jamaican language.

One of the first persons to encourage me to pursue the Jamaican thing was Mervyn Morris who I met in London in the 70s," Johnson explained while acknowledging poets like Mutabaruka and Jean Binta-Breeze, who were in attendance and the late Mikey Smith whose poem, Mi Cyaan Believe It, he recited. Johnson also presented a book with a collection of Smith's works to Liberty Hall.

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