Michael Rosen: ‘He nudged people into seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed’
British author and poet
Benjamin was a hero to millions of people all over the world. His mix of poetry, novels, wisdom, humour and sheer presence grabbed us and delighted us. I first saw him when he was starting out in the poetry clubs, dancing a poem about his mother, voicing his poetry in a voice I hadn’t heard before: Brummie-Caribbean. It was an honour and treat to work with him many times over the years, on videos, radio programmes, and when he MC’d an award ceremony run by the British Council for the best examples of English teaching. Then and often elsewhere, he loved reflecting on his journey from being a semi-literate teenager, getting into trouble, to someone feted at the highest levels for his literary achievements and force of personality.
His poetry is full of power, humanity and belief. He was a Rastafarian in belief and practice and loved talking about what that meant to him. I hope he won’t mind me saying that his love of all things living reminded me of William Blake. People will remember him, I’m sure, appearing on Question Time gently and wittily batting experienced politicians to one side with his comments. I once asked him how he did it, how did he encapsulate “big” stuff in such pithy, seemingly simple ways. He said that he imagined himself talking with his mother: how would they talk about it, he said?
He wrote novels for teenagers. Refugee Boy – as it sounds – takes the point of view of a refugee and the struggle that people in his area have of winning him asylum. One of the great moments in the book is when the boy reflects on what “problems” the local British boys seem to have compared with the problems he is going through.
That’s what Benjamin did over and over again, nudge people into seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed.
Some of his wonderful performances are up online. Please look at them as your way of paying tribute to him. My own personal favourite is Rong Radio. I once asked him where he wrote his poems. He said, “I don’t write them. I make them up in my head when I go running.”
I am devastated by this news. I admired, respected and loved Benjamin and I learned so much from him.
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Colin Grant: ‘He was the people’s poet’
British author and historian
It was raining heavily at the Hay festival 20 years ago when I first saw and was mesmerised by Benjamin Zephaniah. The marquee was filled to the rafters with hundreds of people who it seemed were attending not a literary or racial sacrament but a spiritual one. Rain outside; eternal sunshine within.
Benjamin was the trailblazing epitome not of the reductive “ethnic writer” but of the global majority writer who refused to be categorised. In any event, though kind of ordinary, his uniqueness – a karate, yoga and dominoes-loving Rastafarian poet and storyteller – made it impossible to box him in.
For young black writers, he was the answer to literary gatekeepers who claimed there were no commercial prospects for writing that spoke to social deprivation, marginalisation and racism with a plain-speaking honesty and humour.
There was also the realisation that here was a brotherman who’d been a rascal in his youth but had reinvented himself and been saved by literature; that writing could transform the self as well as readers and listeners.
Benjamin was a one-love Rasta, not guided by any kind of separatism. Today, as some default to silos of separation, his porous writing showed how you could speak to an unimagined cohort with poetry and prose. He was, in essence, what Jamaicans call a “simple sense man”; he spoke to youngsters and elders with the same intensity.
The seeming guilelessness of his writing made some wince and claim he was not a real, learned poet. But when you stopped to listen, or clean your glasses, or dry your eyes, you’d find yourself in the presence of a fierce and fearless emotional intelligence. Benjamin’s spoken and written voice was the expression of a writer who was extraordinary in his ordinariness. He was the people’s poet; a groundbreaker who broke bread with everyone.
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Kae Tempest: ‘The way he carved has become a path for us who follow him’
British spoken word performer and poet
He was a kind and patient soul and I always felt I had his focus when I spoke to him, which is a rare gift to be given, especially for a young poet when being granted a moment to engage with a renowned one. He was always energetic in his conversation and thoughtful in his manner. The way he carved has become a path for us who follow him. In gratitude and with a heavy heart I wish his family peace and send courage to everyone who’s mourning him. What a legacy he leaves behind; a body of work that lasts for ever in words that matter to people.
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Diane Abbott: ‘His political activism carried on alongside his immense literary achievements’
Labour politician
Benjamin Zephaniah was a wonderful poet, writer and performer. But he was also an important figure in the wider culture. When he first came to national prominence in the 1980s there were a number of things that singled him out. One was his broad Birmingham accent. It was an era when so many writers and poets were Oxbridge – if they had a regional accent they dropped it as quickly as they could. But Benjamin never altered his manner, appearance or speaking style one iota to fit in with the literary establishment.
He was also one of the first Rastafarians in the public eye. It seems unremarkable now, but at the time wearing dreadlocks as a public figure was in itself an act of rebellion. In general, he was very attached to his heritage. Born in Handsworth, the heart of Birmingham’s Jamaican community, he was to physically leave it but remained a working-class Jamaican in his heart, his output heavily influenced by the country’s music and culture.
Benjamin was also intensely political. He was caught up in the 1980s race riots and had the usual interactions with the police and the criminal justice system experienced by most black men. His politics was reflected in his work. In 1982 he released the album Rasta, featuring the Wailers (their first recording since the death of Bob Marley) and a tribute to Nelson Mandela. In 2003 he turned down an OBE. He was also a passionate supporter of the rights of Palestinians. Here was someone whose political activism carried on alongside his immense literary achievements; his death is a great loss.
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Carol Ann Duffy: ‘He was decades ahead of his time’
Scottish poet and playwright, and former poet laureate
Benjamin Zephaniah was a revolutionary world laureate whose words were for children, prisoners, the oppressed and abused, animals, teenagers, health workers and freedom fighters. He was decades ahead of his time from the start, an electrifying live performer rooted in dub poetry – either solo or with his band – anti-racist, anti-establishment, anti-corruption, and pro justice and humanity.
Funny, lyrical, angry, truthful, his work changed British poetry profoundly and for the good. He was essential and he was loved and this is a sad, sad day for poetry.
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Simon Hattenstone: ‘What made him truly radical was he didn’t think he was radical’
Guardian features writer
I don’t think I’ve met any public figure/celeb/artist, call him what you will, as unambiguously good as Benjamin Zephaniah. He was an immensely gifted poet, pickpocket (in his early days), novelist, musician, martial arts teacher and professor. But his greatest gift was goodness.
I got to know him 20 years ago after his cousin Mikey Powell, who suffered from psychosis, was killed by the police at the age of 38. Many people still think police violence against black people and deaths in custody are a recent phenomenon. But Benjamin and his family (his brother Tippa Naphtali has been a tireless campaigner on behalf of Mikey) knew all too well from personal experience that it went back decades and Britain was no different to America. Like George Floyd, Mikey was asphyxiated by the police and died calling for his mother after shouting that he couldn’t breathe. It was a shocking story barely reported in British newspapers. Mikey’s death had a devastating impact on Benjamin and the family.
Not least because it brought back memories of his own experience with the police. In the mid-1970s, he was beaten within an inch of his life at a Birmingham police station Three years ago, he told me: “I remember thinking: ‘OK, I’m going to die here.’ It wasn’t like: ‘I think I might die here’, it was: ‘Right, I’m going to die.’ I very calmly thought: ‘How is my mother going to know? Will they bury me?’ I was only 17 at the time, and I just thought I was going to die.” One of his best poems Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death is based on this shocking experience.
Benjamin never aged in looks or spirit. He was still playing 11-a-side football with twentysomethings in his 60s. And his radical spirit burned bright throughout his too short life. What made him truly radical was he didn’t think he was radical. He never made claims for himself or acted the big me. He was just true to himself; impossible to pigeonhole.
So he wrote about Palestine, police beatings, Christopher Columbus living off slavery and Rastafarianism way before they were fashionable issues (and despite his dyslexia). He became vegan when being a bean muncher was about the most un-rock‘n’roll thing you could do, he talked about his own infertility when it was still one of the great taboos for men.
Perhaps most impressive of all in his memoir The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah he admitted to knocking out a disabled boy at school (he later apologised to him) and confessed to hitting a girlfriend when he was a young man (he went on to become an ambassador for two domestic abuse charities) when nobody needed to know. He was compulsively truthful.
Benjamin was adored by all types of people – punks, rastas, students, gangsters, kids, grannies, academics. Perhaps he was so loved because he didn’t make an effort to be. At times, he lived a solitary, spiritual life in China in a small village called Chen Jia Gou, where he practised tai chi with the elders.
He never lost his hope, even in these hopeless times. When I asked how he managed that, he gave a typically Zephanian answer – simple and complicated at the same time, taking in common sense, politics, justice, history and literature. “I just believe in the triumph of good over evil. You’ve got to be hopeful,” he said. “One of the things our oppressors hate is when they try to hold us down and – it’s Maya Angelou – still I rise. You try to hold me down, but I’ll keep coming back.”
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Joseph Coelho: ‘We have lost a giant’
British poet and children’s laureate
I was fresh out of university when I first spoke with Benjamin, working as an assistant producer for Theatre Centre and performing poetry on the London circuit. I was more than a little star struck when I answered the phone and heard his powerful distinctive voice on the other end of the line. Though I never got to spend any significant amount of time with Benjamin, I was always inspired from afar by the fearlessness in his writing and his presence in performance. He could make a child burst out laughing, an adult pause to think. He has been a shining light in the poetry sphere and beyond, showing us all the power of words to delight, enthral and challenge. We have lost a giant and an inspiration, in poetry, activism and the arts.
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Abdul Malik Al Nasir: ‘He was like a big brother’
British journalist, author and spoken word performance poet
I grew up in local authority care, as did Benjamin. We both emerged traumatised and semi-literate and took to poetry as a means to develop literacy. In 2004, I won a lawsuit against Liverpool city council for my time in care, and I used the money to make a film, Word Up – from Ghetto to Mecca, and in that film Benjamin drew parallels between my experience and his own. We were both inspired by the works of civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron. Our activism was fuelled by our experiences of racial discrimination. The poetry was the platform by which we articulated that pain and by which we proposed solutions.
Through filming with Benjamin, he became a friend. Whenever I had any issues or questions that I wanted to talk about and I looked for someone to give me a bit of guidance, I would call Benjamin and he would advise me – he was like a big brother. Just a few weeks ago when I was in the middle of a media storm around some research that I’d done, tracing my ancestry back through slavery, and was threatened with being sued, Benjamin called me and gave me the details of a barrister who could represent me pro bono. That was Benjamin, he was a caring individual. Even though we worked together, it wasn’t about business for him – it was about seeing me a brother in a situation where I was in distress. He literally stepped out of what he was dealing with in his life to make sure I was alright. We’ve lost a national treasure.
