Third World Girl: Selected Poems [With DVD]
![Third World Girl: Selected Poems [With DVD] - Breeze, Jean 'binta'](https://images-us.bookshop.org/ingram/9781852249106.jpg?height=1200&v=v2-b8171acc708b2e123d1d6a47a15eae46)
Jean 'Binta' Breeze was a popular Jamaican Dub poet and storyteller whose performances wee so powerful she was called a 'one-woman festival'. Her poems are Caribbean songs of innocence and experience, of love and conflict. They use personal stories and historical narratives to explore social injustice and the psychological dimensions of black women's experience. Striking evocations of childhood in the hills of Jamaica give way to explorations of the perils and delights of growth and change - through sex, emigration, motherhood and age.
Introduced by renowned critic Colin MacCabe, the book brings together new poems with poetry and reggae chants from four previous collections: Riddym Ravings, Spring Cleaning, On the Edge of an Island and The Arrival of Brighteye. Many of the poems were included in two performances by Jean 'Binta' Breeze filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce at Leicester's Y Theatre available by scanning QR codes printed in the book, along with an interview with Jane Dowson.
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Born in Hanover, Jamaica, she first visited London in 1985 to take part
in the International Book Fair of Radical and Third World Books, and she
continued to write, perform and teach until a collapsed lung resulted
in early retirement to Jamaica. She published eight books of poetry and
stories. Answers (Jamaica, 1982), Riddym Ravings (Race Today, UK, 1988), Spring Cleaning (Virago, 1992) were followed by On the Edge of an Island (1997), The Arrival of Brighteye (2000), The Fifth Figure (2006), Third World Girl: Selected Poems (2011, with DVD) and The Verandah Poems (2016) from Bloodaxe. She also released several records, cassettes and CDs, including Tracks and Eena Me Corner with the Dennis Bovell Dub Band and Riding On De Riddym: selected spoken works
(57 Productions). She performed her work throughout the world,
including tours of the Caribbean, Britain, North America, Europe, South
East Asia and Africa, and latterly divided her time between Jamaica and
England. She received a NESTA Award in 2003, and an MBE in 2012 for
services to literature.
her personal stories and her use of Jamaica's lyrical vernacular.' - Katharine Q. Seelye, The New York Times, tribute to Jean 'Binta' Breeze
'Jean 'Binta' Breeze... emerged in the 1980s as the first female dub poet,
fusing reggae rhythms and music with the spoken word... Through the use
of a variety of women's voices and contexts, Breeze's work challenged
the usual stances of the dub and performance poetry tradition. Whether
on stage, record or page, she spoke for - and to - black female
experience, encompassing a wide range of subjects, styles and
tonalities.' - Lyn Innes, The Guardian, paying tribute to Jean 'Binta' Breeze.
'Jean 'Binta' Breeze... was a poet who first came to prominence among
Jamaica's dub poets, but whose work quickly distinguished itself from
its origins to gain a subtlety and versatility of its own. Dub poetry...
was already capable of delivering powerful political messages. Breeze
adopted this eagerly, but brought to it a more intimate voice that
enabled her to advance feminism as well as openness about mental illness
and sex...Her range included not only the polemical and the personal,
but also more extended narratives and memoirs.' - The Telegraph, tribute to Jean 'Binta' Breeze
'A major, perhaps even a great voice. For stature, Jean "Binta" Breeze
invites a Caribbean comparison with Maya Angelou, except that her range
is broader still. Her poetry shifts effortlessly through standard
English to a native Jamaican which has no equal in its emotional depth' -
Alexander Linklater, The Herald (Scotland)
'She sat on the stage and read a brilliant poem about the softest touch. It just blew me and my classmates away. That was the first time that it occurred to me that poetry could be a job, not just something I wrote, but a career. It was also the first time that I'd seen someone who looked a bit like me in the publishing world.' - Joseph Coelho, Books for Keeps
