When the message came through on one of the WhatsApp groups I’m part of on Thursday morning, the shock, sadness, and heartbreak we felt was palpable. Benjamin Zephaniah, the writer and poet for whom so many of us Black creatives could only hope to emulate, was gone. Tributes by those trying to find the words to express their feelings of loss filled my phone screen over and over again. The footsteps of his life had left a mark in ways that maybe we hadn’t fully comprehended until that point. He is, and will forever be, one of Britain’s literary greats.
Benjamin was a creative talent who had the strength to use his superpower for the betterment of others. He told the stories of those who are often forgotten, he campaigned for those who are forced into the shadows, and rewrote the rules of who gets to be considered a literary great. He chose to do this without compromising who he was, and without compromising his beliefs. He campaigned about the treatment of the Grenfell Tower residents, spoke up about the rise of the National Front, the invasion of Iraq and wrote “What Stephen Lawrence has Taught us” in 1999 as part of the campaign to find the 18-year-old’s murderers. There are countless examples of his activism.
I was raised in a home where the works of Black literary greats were consistently present on our bookshelves, so Benjamin had been a constant in my life for longer than I’d ever really considered. I recited his words in our kitchen or my aunt’s living room on more than one occasion.
In “Dis Policeman Kicking Me To Death”, he highlighted police brutality. In the “The Death Of Joy Gardner” he wrote: “They put a leather belt around her/ 13 feet of tape and bound her/ Handcuffs to secure her/ And God knows what else/ She’s illegal, so deport her/ Said the Empire that brought her.” Many, many years before the treatment of the Windrush Generation finally became a cause the majority cared about, Benjamin had already put their experience into words for all to see. These are just two examples of the way in which he used words to convey the injustices many people chose to ignore.
At home, we were raised to understand the importance and impact of words, that revolutions don’t always come through what happens on the streets. We were taught that those seeds of change can be sown through the words that come when we put pen to paper. We understood throughout our young lives that words have power.
At school, the overwhelmingly white British literary greats that I was being taught were balanced out by my education at home about the largely ignored minority ethnic community literary greats never afforded the same level of respect within the education system. For that I will be eternally grateful to my parents for.
Our paths crossed only once, many years ago at an event. For me, Benjamin was a man whose presence could fill a room, whose laugh and smile could brighten even the darkest of days. I was just so in awe of being in his presence I never did say all the things I wish I had said to him. He was a living literary great to me, and stood in the same room as me, and how often do we get to say that? We are encouraged by our education system to spend so much time bestowing love and critical thinking upon the work of those who are long gone, that we forget British literary and poetic legends can live in the present.
I can remember the way in which Benjamin spoke, giving time to those who were also overjoyed to spend a moment in his presence, wanting to soak up every single word before he moved on to someone else. I remember his long dreadlocks swaying behind him as he moved: a proud representation of his Rastafarian beliefs, a religion which has its origins in the country of my parents’ birth, Jamaica. With his passing, my moment with him is frozen in time.
We now have a choice as to how we ensure the work of this literary great is cemented in British history. He wasn’t a writer who chose to sit on the side-lines as injustices played out around him without saying a word. Instead he lived his life fighting for those whose voices are often silenced, amplifying their stories when others chose to ignore them. The footsteps of his life have left a mark in the hearts and minds of so many.
Who gets to be remembered in British history is a long-standing debate. The decisions over blue plaques, statues, and memorials have historically never worked in the favour of minority ethnic communities or women – neither were deemed important enough to their contribution towards the betterment of this country remembered throughout time.
In recent years the tide has thankfully turned, yet change has been painfully slow. But we don’t need a years-long debate over the importance of where Benjamin Zephaniah sits in the story of the history of Britain and whether or not he deserves to be remembered, because that’s the easy bit – the answer is clearly “yes”.
Benjamin Zephaniah redefined what it means to be a literary great
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0
08.12.2023
When the message came through on one of the WhatsApp groups I’m part of on Thursday morning, the shock, sadness, and heartbreak we felt was palpable. Benjamin Zephaniah, the writer and poet for whom so many of us Black creatives could only hope to emulate, was gone. Tributes by those trying to find the words to express their feelings of loss filled my phone screen over and over again. The footsteps of his life had left a mark in ways that maybe we hadn’t fully comprehended until that point. He is, and will forever be, one of Britain’s literary greats.
Benjamin was a creative talent who had the strength to use his superpower for the betterment of others. He told the stories of those who are often forgotten, he campaigned for those who are forced into the shadows, and rewrote the rules of who gets to be considered a literary great. He chose to do this without compromising who he was, and without compromising his beliefs. He campaigned about the treatment of the Grenfell Tower residents, spoke up about the rise of the National Front, the invasion of Iraq and wrote “What Stephen Lawrence has Taught us” in 1999 as part of the campaign to find the 18-year-old’s murderers. There are countless examples of his activism.........
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