Dread Poetry and Freedom

Reviews / Votes

'David Austin offers nothing less than a radical geography of black art in his (re)sounding of Linton Kwesi Johnson. You don't play with Johnson's revolutionary poetry, Austin teaches, and 'Dread, Poetry and Freedom' is as serious, and beautiful, as our life' -- Fred Moten, poet, critic and theorist 'A moving and dialogic musing on freedom. Austin's richly textured study reads LKJ's poetry in relation to an expansive tradition of black radical politics and poetics. It captures both the urgency of Johnson's historical moment and his resonance for ours' -- Shalini Puri, Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh 'With the intensity of a devotee and the precision of a scholar, David Austin skillfully traverses the dread terrain of Linton Kwesi Johnson's politics and poetry, engaging readers in an illuminating dialogue with diverse interlocutors who haunt the writer's imagination' -- Carolyn Cooper, cultural critic, author of 'Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the 'Vulgar' Body of Jamaican Popular Culture' ' 'Dread, Poetry and Freedom' offers an expansive exploration of Caribbean political and cultural history, from Rastafari in Jamaica and Walter Rodney and Guyana to the Cuban Revolution with impressive articulations of the significance of Fanonism. Caribbean political theory is animating literary and cultural studies diasporically; this work demonstrates this elegantly' -- Carole Boyce Davies, author of 'Caribbean Spaces', Professor of Africana Studies and Literature at Cornell University