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Vintage Classics Verbal Riddim Dub Poetry.
This is dub bold and musical, funny and furious.
This collection brings together the work of nine inventive and brilliant poets who defined and drove the dub poetry genre. From the Caribbean, Canada and the UK, the poetry in this collection spans forty years, as dub became a powerful cultural and creative force.
With roots in the reggae culture of 1970s Kingston, dub poetry uses the vivid expressions of everyday spoken language to describe and challenge the experience of life on the margins. Early dub poetry took on police violence, slums and poverty. Later, as Caribbean migrants arrived in countries like Britain and Canada, dub poets faced new racism, discrimination and hostility. Over four difficult decades, dub gave marginalised people a voice for their anger, defiance and creativity. It was the soundtrack to post-Windrush culture.
Serious and humorous, alive and urgent, here is the very best of dub poetry.
The poets included in this collection Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper.
This collection brings together the work of nine inventive and brilliant poets who defined and drove the dub poetry genre. From the Caribbean, Canada and the UK, the poetry in this collection spans forty years, as dub became a powerful cultural and creative force.
With roots in the reggae culture of 1970s Kingston, dub poetry uses the vivid expressions of everyday spoken language to describe and challenge the experience of life on the margins. Early dub poetry took on police violence, slums and poverty. Later, as Caribbean migrants arrived in countries like Britain and Canada, dub poets faced new racism, discrimination and hostility. Over four difficult decades, dub gave marginalised people a voice for their anger, defiance and creativity. It was the soundtrack to post-Windrush culture.
Serious and humorous, alive and urgent, here is the very best of dub poetry.
The poets included in this collection Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper.
- GenresMusic
240 pages, Paperback
Published June 5, 2025
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If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.
Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2024
I really enjoyed this book, and thought it was an excellent anthology 😃
the poets and poems were varied... but the anthology felt really cohesive, in an effortless way, and felt well compiled 🙂
many of the poets use an autobiographical approach well, sharing experiences, and often connecting their own experience to community, social history and political movement. some of the poems written in the third person have a great story telling feel, including as mock moral and/or cautionary tales 😃 some subjects are super serious, some light and humorous, some a combination...
there's alot of movement in the anthology, both thru rhythm, and thru migration stories and stories from diaspora. geographically the poems inhabit the Caribbean, the UK, and Canada. a number of poems move between places over their course - in either/both direction, and back and fro across time and history too.
🌟 home, hope, displacement, duality, migration, marginalisation, racism, resistance... 🌟 musical and verbal arts, social history, cultural history, political history, movements and progress 🌟
🎵🎶
4.5 stars rounded up 😁
🎶🎵
accessed as an audiobook from the National Poetry Library in London, UK. the book was published in 2023, and I was happy to find it when checking for new audiobook additions to the library. the audiobook structure was the only thing that let the collection down - it's not laid out well, the visual written contents page is abit random with just the occasional title, and doesn't help navigate the book at all - if retaining this simplicity and economy, I think it would have been better to partition it by poet. wrt spoken content info, mostly just the title was given.
the book details online list the poets as: Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper.
the readers were good 🙂 tho information about them abit lacking too - I think they were Seroca Davis and Gavin Dunn. definitely a book to listen if you can, compared to reading on a page 🙂
there's abit of blurb, and a poem from the collection, on the publishers website:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20...
the poets and poems were varied... but the anthology felt really cohesive, in an effortless way, and felt well compiled 🙂
many of the poets use an autobiographical approach well, sharing experiences, and often connecting their own experience to community, social history and political movement. some of the poems written in the third person have a great story telling feel, including as mock moral and/or cautionary tales 😃 some subjects are super serious, some light and humorous, some a combination...
there's alot of movement in the anthology, both thru rhythm, and thru migration stories and stories from diaspora. geographically the poems inhabit the Caribbean, the UK, and Canada. a number of poems move between places over their course - in either/both direction, and back and fro across time and history too.
🌟 home, hope, displacement, duality, migration, marginalisation, racism, resistance... 🌟 musical and verbal arts, social history, cultural history, political history, movements and progress 🌟
🎵🎶
4.5 stars rounded up 😁
🎶🎵
accessed as an audiobook from the National Poetry Library in London, UK. the book was published in 2023, and I was happy to find it when checking for new audiobook additions to the library. the audiobook structure was the only thing that let the collection down - it's not laid out well, the visual written contents page is abit random with just the occasional title, and doesn't help navigate the book at all - if retaining this simplicity and economy, I think it would have been better to partition it by poet. wrt spoken content info, mostly just the title was given.
the book details online list the poets as: Oku Onuora, Mikey Smith, Mutabaruka, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Lillian Allen and Afua Cooper.
the readers were good 🙂 tho information about them abit lacking too - I think they were Seroca Davis and Gavin Dunn. definitely a book to listen if you can, compared to reading on a page 🙂
there's abit of blurb, and a poem from the collection, on the publishers website:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/20...
March 3, 2026
Highlights of the collection were:
Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze’s
The Arrival of Brighteye
Ratoon
Anthem for Black Britain
Benjamin Zephaniah’s
Walking Black Home
Chant of a Homesick Nigga
The Men from Jamaica are Settling Down
Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze’s
The Arrival of Brighteye
Ratoon
Anthem for Black Britain
Benjamin Zephaniah’s
Walking Black Home
Chant of a Homesick Nigga
The Men from Jamaica are Settling Down
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews