'Living legend' Linton Kwesi Johnson wins PEN Pinter prize
Linton Kwesi Johnson has won the PEN Pinter prize, with the Jamaican dub poet’s “political ferocity” and “tireless scrutiny of history” praised as “truly Pinteresque” by judges.
The award, set up by writers’ organisation English PEN, is intended to defend freedom of expression and celebrate literature, honouring a writer who, as Harold Pinter put it in his 2005 Nobel prize speech, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies”.
Johnson, who was the first black poet ever to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series with his collection Mi Revalueshanary Fren, joins former winners of the prize including Lemn Sissay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood.
The 67-year-old poet said that “awards are the nourishment of every artist’s ego”, and that it was “always nice to be acknowledged”. “It is especially gratifying to receive an award that honours the memory of esteemed dramatist Harold Pinter – free thinker, anti-imperialist and human rights champion,” he added.
Claire Armitstead, the Guardian’s associate editor for culture and a trustee for English PEN, said that once nominations for the award were laid out, it “took all of two seconds” for her and her fellow judges “to agree that we had a clear and outstanding winner”.
“Linton Kwesi Johnson is a poet, reggae icon, academic and campaigner, whose impact on the cultural landscape over the last half century has been colossal and multi-generational,” she said. “His political ferocity and his tireless scrutiny of history are truly Pinteresque, as is the humour with which he pursues them.”
Born in rural Jamaica in 1952, Johnson moved to London in 1963, joining the Black Panthers as a teenager. His first poetry collection, Voices of the Living and the Dead, was published by Race Today in 1974, with his first LP, Dread Beat an’Blood, released in 1978. Setting radical political poetry in Jamaican patois to a reggae beat, it told stories of police brutality and Brixton street life, and created the genre of dub poetry.
Judge and publisher Sharmaine Lovegrove said that she felt as though she “came into the world with the sound of political and cultural activism from Linton Kwesi Johnson’s work ringing in my ears”.
“His powerful words and energetic passion have guided me and many others to always interrogate and push forwards against the status quo,” said Lovegrove. “It’s been a honour to judge the PEN Pinter prize this year and a greater honour to be part of the collective awarding the prize to a living legend.”
Johnson will receive his award in a digital ceremony co-hosted by the British Library on 12 October, when he will also reveal his choice for the “international writer of courage”, which goes to a person who is “active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty”.
