Linton Kwesi Johnson has gradually moved from the margins toward the centerof the British literary establishment over the last 20 years. His inclusion inthe Penguin Modern Classics series in 2002 and the Golden PEN award fromEnglish Pen in 2012 demonstrate his rising status within the literary world.Yet, despite the fact that mainstream literary institutions in the United Kingdomhave increasingly recognized him as a poet, there has been relativelylittle published scholarship on his work, especially compared to other contemporarypoets with a similar-size readership. One could argue that his statusas an activist poet, practitioner, and performer therefore has been higherthan his standing as an aesthetic theorist, writer-critic, or philosophical poet.David Austin’s Dread Poetry and Freedom is the first published monographabout Johnson, and one clear sign, among many recent developments, thatthis is changing. He shows that the once more dominant historical and materialistfocus on Johnson as a “straightforward” political poet is being increasinglyreplaced by new theoretical, and at times abstract, explorations of hisaesthetic-political project.
展开▼
