Brunel University's Rastafarian-in-residence

Kung-fu-practicing reggae stars make the best creative writing professors--that's the word on the street over in Uxbridge, anyways, where Brunel University's English department will welcome Benjamin Zephaniah this month. Zephaniah is known for his performance poetry--a 2009 BBC poll ranked him England's third favorite poet after Eliot and Donne--but also for his novels, plays, children's books, and chart-topping reggae hits. Zephaniah hopes to use his influence to "fight against the dead image of poetry in academia":

Zephaniah, who broke into the literary world while performing dub poetry alongside stand-up comedians and punk bands in 1980s London, will not be teaching from traditional textbooks or poetry anthologies.

Later this month, he will continue his "fight against the dead image of poetry in academia" at Brunel's west London campus with a course based on performance poetry.

People used to chant lines from Shelley and Keats at demos in their time," he says. "They used to write and perform to each other. I want to teach poetry as a living, breathing thing."

Literature is too often considered solely in the context of the written word, Zephaniah argues. "If you say you are a writer in Britain, people ask you what you've published: 'Can I buy some of your work?'

"If you are in Africa, Asia or the Caribbean and you tell someone you're a writer, they will say 'let's hear something'.

Find the rest over at the Times Higher Education, or get a crash course in Zephaniah teaching tactics here!