Mi Revalueshanary Fren: Selected Poems.(Brief article)(Book review)

Mi Revalueshanary Fren: Selected Poems LINTON KWESI JOHNSON. Ausable (Consortium, dist.), $16 paper (120p) ISBN 1-931337-29-2

With fiery verse and spellbinding, often reggae-backed, performances, the Jamaicanborn, 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 …