Linton Kwesi Johnson is a British poet with deep ties to the Caribbean and again back to Africa. Although his ancestry bears relevance to his worldview, he tends to place his poetry within his present context, only occasionally alluding to Africa. In fact Johnson's relationship to his ethnicity appears to engage politics more than narrative. Poems like "Di Great Insohreckshan" treat issues of racism and class oppression which manifest through police brutality. The community of Brixton engages in a riot, expressing the pent-up aggression of decades of oppression.
Much has been written about Johnson's decision to write his poems like "Sonny's Lettah" in pidgin. He writes in a phonetic transcription of the English pidgin spoken in Jamaica. In one way Johnson is honoring his cultural tradition by replicating this manner of speech. In another way he is making a political statement about language. Speech and written language have long been used as means of discrimination between cultures or ethnicities, serving as either justification of the "other's" primitive nature or as means of denying privileges or equal opportunity to those who are not literate or do not speak the dominant language. Johnson writes through the eyes of his subjects, giving them a voice which is true to their own -- one which speaks pidgin, dropping "h's" and flattening "o's."
