Benjamin Zephaniah: Contemporary Voice of Resistance in Black Britain
Journal Title: International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) - Year 2017, Vol 7, Issue 4
Abstract
“..Dis poetry is not afraid of going in a book No, but dis poetry need ears to hear an eyes to have a look Yes, dis poetry is Verbal Riddim, no big words involved An if I have a problem de riddim gets it solved, I have tried to be romantic, it did no good for me So I tek a Reggae Riddim an build my poetry, I could try be something personal But you’ve heard it all before, No written words are needed Because plenty words in store, Dis poetry is called Dub Ranting De tongue plays a beat An de body starts skanking, Dis poetry is quick an childish…” – Benjamin Zephaniah In an era where the postcolonial nations are diligently “writing back”, it is indispensable to discuss the creative possibilities wrested by black poets from a combination of assimilation and resistance to English as a language and culture. Poetry becomes an effective instrument of protest because it can circulate orally without the aid of the print medium, and its performance is less susceptible to censorship than narrative. As a mode of resistance, black poets abandon the genteel European manners of their white contemporaries and write about their condition in plain and sometimes rough language, using rhythms close to native speech and music, because protest becomes more effective when it finds means within language and form to match the force of outer reality. This paper attempts to examine the Rastafarian Dub poet and writer Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (b.1958) one of the most important voices of the contemporary British African-Caribbean community, who uses ‘performance poetry’ to voice against the abandonment of disadvantaged neighborhoods in England and against the establishment leading the country. As a black performance poet in a whitened world, Benjamin Zephaniah’s case illustrates how a writer may live outside the culture and region of his ancestry and champion the cause of the black races in verse and fiction. His poetry becoming a part of ‘counterculture’ helps fight, one, and the issues affecting the contemporary black community in Britain and two, the “dead image of poetry in academia”. He is also prone to mix resistance or critique with an affirmative stance that absorbs class, gender, and race into an appeal to the notion of a universal human reason and compassion in the audiences that attend his performances, as well as those who listen to them in CD or audio, or read them as printed words on the page. Zephaniah therefore employs a contemporary mode called the ‘dub poetry’ to become the best instance of a contemporary voice of resistance where voices are being silenced in an ever increasing world of violence. Zephaniah seeks to empower his own people and heal their colonizers to make our rapidly shrinking world a better place for the generations to come.
Authors and Affiliations
Susan Sathyadas
Keywords
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