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“... Ifirst encountered​ Linton KwesiJohnson on TV. My family was watching a rerun of his performance of ‘Inglan Is a Bitch’, which aired on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1980. In a pork pie hat and dark glasses, Johnson delivered his poem about the Caribbean migrant experience of his parents’ generation in a rhythmic laid-back drawl:well mi dhu day wok an mi dhu nite wokmi dhu clean wok an mi dhu dutty wokdem seh dat black man is very lazybut if yu si how mi wok yu woodah seh mi crazyInglan is a bitchdere’s no escapin itThe sight of a Black man openly criticising Britain on national television reverberated through diasporic circles ...”

“... Johnson’s Imlac, urging that the poet neglect the ‘minuter discriminations’ of the tulip leaf in favour of ‘general properties’, has been unpopular for two hundred years, never more so than now, when it is believed that accumulated tiny detail – thinginess – vouches for a poem’ s authenticity. But Imlac also argues, apparently contradicting himself, that ‘to a poet nothing can be useless,’ that he ‘must know many languages and many sciences’ and through his command of botany, zoology, astronomy, politics, ethics and so on become a ‘legislator of mankind ...”

“... The poet​ Linton KwesiJohnson calls the first two generations of Caribbean people in postwar Britain the ‘heroic’ generation and the ‘rebel’ generation. The Windrush generation, who arrived between 1948 and 1962, when the Commonwealth Immigrants Act came into force, were ‘heroes’ who, though not politically passive, were forced to cultivate resilience in the face of violence and hostility ...”

“... form of non-standard English in the way that, say, the novels of James Kelman or the poems of Linton KwesiJohnson are. But Agu’s voice is authentic in the more important sense that it conveys an impression of a fully developed human consciousness, however damaged. It is also true to Agu’s experience; the use ...”

“... the black actors got the hell out and sat behind hoardings playing poker or listening to tapes of Linton KwesiJohnson. Memorably, most of them ganged up later in the day to cheer the NF boys for their ‘fine acting’. Other jobs followed. Occasionally, the early starts mean I have to go up the night before as I live ...”

“... vogueishness – have been dealt with explicitly by other writers: Douglas Dunn, Tony Harrison, Linton KwesiJohnson, John Agard, Grace Nichols and Tom Leonard, to name a few. For some, ‘literary art’ is a territory to be attained (Harrison’s ‘we’ll occupy/ your lousy leasehold, poetry’), in others a ...”

“... the kind of politically engaged poem we should have more of. Although Ken Smith, Tony Harrison, Linton KwesiJohnson, Fred D’Aguiar and David Constantine can be found in one or both anthologies, we get the sense, in Armitage and Crawford especially, that ‘democratic’ has dwindled into a synonym for talking ...”

“... writer: the landscape is not as bleak as he suggests. Paulin finds room for two such poets, Linton KwesiJohnson and John Cooper Clarke, though I might not have echoed his choice from the latter: the 82 uses of ‘fucking’ in 50 lines would perhaps be more effective in performance than on the printed page. One ...”

“... French and Old English as well as the language of Robert Browning (‘Oh, to be in England’), Linton KwesiJohnson (‘Inglan is a Bitch’) and T.S. Eliot (‘History is now and England’). I had got as far as setting out the rationale for such a book in a lecture at the British Academy when the Penguin and ...”