Blog
La Contra: No te dejes llevar por la mayoría
June 26, 2019
Ima Sanchís, from Barcelona’s La Vanguardia newspaper, published this interview with Benjamin Zephaniah in the backcover column titled “La Contra”, on July 4, 2006.
His poetry, impregnated with Jamaican music and literature and a highly political content, questions social values with a funky sense of humor, [special features] which made him the “black voice” of England in the 1980s. Everything seems normal until that point, but it turns out that his books for young readers (he has two published by Verdecielo, ‘Plantar cara’ and ‘Alem Kelo, refugiado’) are the books stolen the most in British libraries. He published his first poetry collection at 20 years of age, when he was a barely literate dyslexic. He has received 13 honorary doctorates, recorded 12 CDs with his own music and his theatre pieces are performed at BBC Radio and Television. He spent time in a reformatory and went through jail briefly during his adolescence. “I am a simple human being concerned about the state of the World”. – By Ima Sanchís, La Vanguardia, December 4th 2006