Image Credit: E7 Now & Then www.e7-nowandthen.org
Forest Gate author and community activist, Derek Smith, pays tribute to, and shares local memories of, his pal, the recently deceased poet, Benjamin Zephaniah.
I first met Benjamin Zephaniah shortly after he came to London in 1980. He was in his early 20s, a Rastafarian with long dreadlocks. He had left Birmingham out of necessity, where he says in his autobiography (The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah Poet), he was on the wrong side of the law, and had to get out or he’d end up dead. A good reason to leave town. Besides which, he wanted be a poet.
A crazy aspiration for a dyslexic young man. But he had a bundle of poems which he’d got typed up. He now wanted to make them into a book and get moving. He was a young man in a hurry.
