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Verbal Riddim : Dub Poetry

Various, Oku Onuora, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, James Berry, Benjamin Zephaniah
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Publishing (Vintage Classics)
Published: June 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781784878276
240 pages
Country of publication: United Kingdom

£9.99

This is dub poetry: bold and musical, funny and furious.

This collection brings together the work of nine inventive and brilliant poets who defined and drove the dub poetry genre. From the Caribbean, Canada and the UK, the poetry in this collection spans forty years, as dub became a powerful cultural and creative force.

With roots in the reggae culture of 1970s Kingston, dub poetry uses the vivid expressions of everyday spoken language to describe and challenge the experience of life on the margins. Early dub poetry took on police violence, slums and poverty. Later, as Caribbean migrants arrived in countries like Britain and Canada, dub poets faced new issues: racism, discrimination and hostility. Over four difficult decades, dub gave marginalised people a voice for their anger, defiance and creativity. It was the soundtrack to post-Windrush culture.

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