Mi Revalueshanary Fren: Selected Poems

With fiery verse and spellbinding, often reggae-backed, performances, the Jamaican-born, London-based Johnson helped create the hybrid genre of dub poetry in the late 1970s. Mixing militancy with pathos, ballad forms with subtler narrative modes; LKJ (as he's known) remains a leading voice of Afro-Caribbean Britain. He took a giant step toward canonicity in 2002 when he became the first contemporary black poet given his own volume in the British series of Penguin Classics, which this first American book reprints, with a new introduction from novelist Russell Banks. Using Jamaican Creole, rather than standard English, LKJ tries at once to speak for a nation within a nation and to craft a populist idiom with potentially universal appeal, drawing terms and attitudes from Jamaican culture, biblical teachings and Black Power: "All oppression/ can do is bring/ passion to di heights of eruption," he promises; "we're di forces af victri/ an wi comin rite through." Here are manifestos for the African Diaspora, reggae protests against police brutality and, toward the end of the volume, introspective, even erotic, verse. His lingo poses no barrier to comprehension; more problematic for Americans might be poems based on news events (such as the 1981 New Cross Massacre in London) poorly publicized here. Includes CD of Johnson reading his poems. (Sept.)