Arena Season 1, Episode 184

Upon Westminster Bridge · BBC Four · Tuesday, November 23

It is commonly thought that poets are university-trained intellectuals who occasionally produce slim volumes about their personal feelings. This is not so with Michael Smith. Smith, an electrifying performer, is an exponent of 'dub' poetry - which draws on talk culture, reggae music and the rich rhythms of Caribbean native speech. At school in Jamaica Smith was taught the standard works of English Literature but poems about 'The Daffodils' and 'Westminster Bridge' had little relevance to his upbringing in the ghettos of Kingston. Tonight's Arena follows Smith on his recent British tour and features the great Marxist historian C.L.R. James, Lynton Kwesi Johnson, the pioneer of dub poetry, and film of the late Bob Marley.