Linton Kwesi Johnson Has Won the Prestigious PEN Pinter Prize

English PEN has named Jamaican-born, London-based poet Linton Kwesi Johnson the recipient of this year's PEN Pinter Prize. Johnson, born in Jamaica in 1952, moved to London in 1963 and joined the Black Panthers as a teenager. Race Today published his first poetry collection, Voices of the Living and the Dead, in 1974, and Dread Beat an’Blood, his first LP, was 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," writes Alison Flood at The Guardian. Picking up from there: 

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”.

Read more at The Guardian.