Propa Propaganda

by Benjamin Zephaniah

Overview

Propa Propaganda was Benjamin Zephaniah's second collection from Bloodaxe. It includes some of his best-known poems, including 'I Have a Scheme', 'The Death of Joy Gardner', 'White Comedy' and 'The Angry Black Poet'.

Best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults - and his poetry with attitude for children - Zephaniah had his own rap/reggae band. He produced numerous recordings, including Dub Ranting (1982), Rasta (1983), Us and Dem (1990), Back to Roots (1995), Belly of de Beast (1996) and Naked (2004). He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996.

His first book of poems, Pen Rhythm, was produced in 1980 by a small East London publishing cooperative, Page One Books. His second collection, The Dread Affair, was published by Hutchinson's short-lived Arena imprint in 1985. He published three collections with Bloodaxe, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black Too Strong (2001), the latter including poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case. To Do Wid Me, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce (Bloodaxe Books, 2013), includes a full-length feature film on DVD with all the poems performed in the film - taken from all three of his collections - included in the book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781852243722
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	09/26/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Best-known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults - and his poetry with attitude for children - Benjamin Zephaniah has his own rap/reggae band and has made many recordings. He grew up in Jamaica and in Handsworth, Birmingham, where he was sent to an approved school for being uncontrollable, rebellious and 'a born failure', ending up in jail for burglary. After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. In 1989 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and has since received honorary doctorates from several English universities, but famously refused to accept a nomination for an OBE in 2003. He was voted Britain's 3rd favourite poet of all time (after T.S. Eliot and John Donne) in a BBC poll in 2009. In 2011 he was poet-in-residence at Keats House in 2011, and then made a radical career change by taking up his first ever academic position as a chair in Creative Writing at Brunel University in West London. He has appeared in a number of television programmes, including Eastenders, The Bill, Live and Kicking, Blue Peter and Wise Up, and played Gower in a BBC Radio 3 production of Shakespeare's Pericles in 2005. He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996. His first book of poems, Pen Rhythm, was produced in 1980 by a small East London publishing cooperative, Page One Books. His second collection, The Dread Affair, was published by Hutchinson's short-lived Arena imprint in 1985. He then published three collections with Bloodaxe, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black Too Strong (2001), the latter including poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case, followed by the DVD-book To Do Wid Me (2013) with a full-length feature film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce. His latest book is his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes and Benjamin Zephaniah (Simon & Schuster, 2018). His other titles include poetry books for children from Puffin/Penguin and novels for teenagers from Bloomsbury.

Editorial Reviews

These five books admirably demonstrate the diversity of international poetry; they have no common ground, except, perhaps, that they share an American publisher. Transtrmer and Enzensberger are translated (from Swedish and German, respectively), in crisp, powerful English. Transtrmer is probably the most highly regarded of poets in Sweden, enjoying a fine reputation worldwide, and his poems are widely available in English. This collection offers new work in a dual-language text that invites careful reading, and the English versions ring for what they are, pleasingly. Enzensberger's work is presented only in translation, but it doesn't seem likely that you will go wrong trusting translator Hamburger. Enzensberger is a product of Nazi Nuremberg, a disciple of Marx, and a wry, satiric, rogue with intelligence, who finds poetry in social criticism and a wide range of techno-scientific knowledge. The work collected in The Colonade of Teeth, an anthology of Modern Hungarian poetry, has been translated by many hands. How awful it is that we are not more familiar with these poets: Sandor Csoori, Miklos Radnoti, Agnes Nemes Nagy35 in all. All were born after 1900; Gyozo Ferencz, the youngest, was born in 1954. Hungarians have a national treasure in these poets, and this volume should shed a well-deserved light on their work. Bejamin Zephaniah is a Rasta poet, Jamaican playwright, and musician who writes for the page with an acute awareness of speech and sound. He slips in and out of idiom and dialect without losing either poise or rhythm. Dunmore employs a more measured line, a soft-stepping gait but is no less passionate. Her menagerie includes tigers, toads, and tortoises, as well as muggers and murderers. Her keen sense of story and lyrical voice will reward many readers. A varied assembly, then; there's something for everybody here. Recommended for international poetry collections.Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia

Library Journal