Black British poetry, some considerations

Lyric Returns in Recent Black British Poetry

“…As Kwame Dawes argued in an influential 2005 essay, 7 one reason that lyric was for a time left behind by black British poets was its association with white writingwhereas performance poetry, for good or ill, became unmistakably black: Most of the Black poets working in Britain today have emerged through the performance medium -a medium that is seriously aware of voice, idiom, dialogue and popular discourse…. The performative is linked to the language and the language is defined by elements that do not immediately link these poets to the private, arched lyricism of modern British poetry… … The position of the Black poet in Britain has become inextricably linked to the notions of 'performance poetry' and the reductionist way in which the co-opted use of the term has created in many Black poets a desire to either run away from the label, or embrace it with defiance and a kind of statement of race and aesthetics.…”