Riddym Ravings
(the mad woman’s poem)
De fus time dem kar me go a Bellevue
was fi di dactar an de lanlord aperate
an tek de radio outa mi head
troo dem sieze the bed
weh did a gi mi cancer
an mek mi talk to nobady
ah di same night wen dem trow mi out fi no pay de rent
mi haffi sleep outa door wid de Channel One riddym box
an de DJ fly up eena mi head
mi hear im a play seh
Eh, Eh,
No feel no way
Town is a place dat ah really kean stay
Dem kudda – ribbit mi han
Eh – ribbit mi toe
Mi waan go a country go look mango
fah wen hungry mek King St pavement
bubble an dally in front a mi yeye
an mi foot start wanda falla fly
to de garbage pan eena de chinaman backlat
dem nearly chap aff mi hand eena de butcha shap
fi de piece a ratten poke
ah de same time de mawga gal in front a mi
drap de laas piece a ripe banana
an mi – ben dung – pick i up – an nyam i
a dat time dem grab mi an kar mi back a Bellevue
dis time de dactar an de landlord aperate
an tek de radio plug outa mi head
den sen mi out, seeh mi alright
but – as ah ketch back outa street
ah push een back de plug
an ah hear mi DJ still a play, seh
Eh, Eh,
no feel no way
town is a place dat ah really kean stay
dem kudda – ribbit me han
eh – ribbit me toe
mi waan go a country go look mango
[. . .]
Jean Breeze
At the core of the cultural upheaval that swept the Caribbean following the expulsion of Walter Rodney from Jamaica on October 16, 1968, was the evolution and rapid ascendancy of that branch of West Indian literature known as dub poetry. And among the major artists who led the performance and popularisation of this art form was the poet, actress, film writer and university fellow Jean Breeze.
She earned the distinction of being the first woman dub poet, later rising to become one of the foremost performers in a field occupied mainly by men and even projecting a macho image when she joined it in the 1980s. But her immersion was impactful and she rose to prominence using the form to treat women’s issues, advancing the cause of the downtrodden and using the Jamaican situation, as she expressed it, to reflect black issues around the world. Dub poetry, generally radical in its outlook, easily admitted the post-colonial quality of her work, linguistically shaped by both Jamaican Creole and the rhythms of reggae music.
Born Jean Lumsden in western Jamaica, and married to Welshman Brian Breese in 1974, poet Jean “Binta” Breeze, MBE (11 March, 1956 – August 4, 2021) later adapted her husband’s name to Breeze and adopted the African name Binta. She first moved to Kingston at the break-up of her marriage in 1978, spent a year at the Jamaica School of Drama and became involved in the cultural/artistic community. She then moved to London in 1985, where she rose to be a very prominent performance poet and had a prolific and productive career.
She trained as a teacher but went full time into writing and was very much in demand as a performance poet. She also gained renown in the London theatre through many roles as an actress on stage in addition to script writing. Such was the impact of her public readings, performances and the publication of nine collections of verse, that she made what turned out to be influential contributions to both Jamaican and British poetry. She was honoured by Queen Elizabeth who appointed her an MBE in 2012, “for her services to literature” and during a career of some three decades in the UK, received a number of university fellowships and an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester in 2017. Jamaica recognised her with the award of a Musgrave Silver Medal from the Institute of Jamaica.
Dub poetry emerged quite quickly out of a number of factors that converged around 1970 following the impact on culture of Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica by the Hugh Shearer government in 1968. Rodney was a young history lecturer at the UWI Mona Campus whose radical Marxist persuasion attracted the suspicion of the government. To make things worse, he visited and interacted with the working class in depressed localities in Kingston, and had close alliances with African consciousness and the education of the proletariat. He was denied re-entry to the country on October 16 when he returned from a Black writers’ conference.
At the same time, there was growing dissent among the population against a right wing, anti-working class, pro-capitalist administration whose policies oppressed much that was brewing on the socio-cultural front. Such movements as socialism, communism, African and Black consciousness, and off-shoots of Black Power were gaining ground in a previously conservative society not quite free of neo-colonialism. Rastafarianism was becoming more accepted by the middle class, and more influential. West Indian literature was establishing itself as a cultural force, as was local popular music like reggae. The music was reflecting these changes and, increasingly, sounded notes of protest against the establishment.
The university students responded to Rodney’s expulsion with protests both on and off campus, and riots flared up among the people in downtown Kingston. Foreigners and foreign elements on campus were targeted and came under attack from the government and the academic community defended itself through publications and a number of new periodicals in both Jamaica and Trinidad such as Abeng, Tapia, Savacou, the ASAWI Bulletin and Moko Jumbie among others.
Rather than alienating the campus, the government’s reactions brought the academics and the local working class population closer together. Several performances of poetry and spoken word along with drumming mushroomed in many unconventional locations around the city, referred to as ‘Yard’ performances or theatre. Academics, students, fledgling writers and a few established ones without any premeditated plans, joined forces in these performances along with Rasta elements. The language of performance became increasingly Creole or Jamaican Patois or mixes of it with English. Creole poetry and the influence of the voice and orality in mainstream poetry saw rapid advancements. Mainstream poets and critics such as Mervyn Morris and Rex Nettleford who both promoted Louise Bennett grew in influence, joined by others such as Dennis Scott in the writing and public reading of Creole verse or poetic language. Both Morris and Scott frequently read their poems at Yard events, and readings of Bennett were extremely popular although she herself did not appear.
It was out of these developments that dub poetry quickly evolved. It was a revolutionary, modern verse in Creole, highly influenced by reggae music or the DJ recordings of such exponents as Big Youth and King Stitch. It was oral in quality, composed for performance and grounded in rhythms from the music. The dynamics are well articulated by Kwame Dawes, most thoroughly in Wheel and Come Again: An Anthology of Reggae Poetry (1998). Dub poetry emerged as protest verse, giving voice to the struggle against social and political oppression. The predominant voice was that of the unprivileged man against a hostile society.
This type of verse was first published on the Mona Campus in Savacou Numbers 3 and 4 in 1971, and first acknowledged as a new branch of West Indian literature by critic Gordon Rohlehr. It was also acknow-ledged by Morris, Rohlehr and Stewart Brown in the anthology Voiceprint (1989) and by Paula Burnett in the Penguin anthology of Caribbean Verse. This form of West Indian literature rose to promi-nence after 1971 mainly popularised by performers Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mutabaruka, Mikey Smith and Oku Onuora (formerly Orlando Wong).
It was this kind of verse that Breeze predominantly engaged. “Riddym Rav-ings”, often called “The Mad Woman’s Poem” is arguably her most acclaimed poem. The persona is a woman who typified the tragedy of rural-urban migra-tion in a third world country. Although set in Jamaica, Breeze declared that her writing was “for the Caribbean and the third world”. It is an oft told tale of the country woman relocating to the city for a better life only to find hardship, poverty and homelessness, often ending up in insanity. However, the insanity is a question. The destitution often observed in street dwellers is hastily deemed as madness by society as a whole, but is it really?
The poem above is narrated by a woman whose view is that she is rational, reasonable, and more intelligent than the others who believe that she is mad. An undercurrent of humour runs through it, but it is the tragic tale of a woman wronged. Breeze perfected the woman’s voice and consciousness tainted by her social situation.
There is the point of view that the city is unwholesome and corrupting as oppos-ed to the fresh and healing environment of the country. It is typically pastoral. Her mind is afflicted by the corrupting economic circumstances in which the doctor, who is supposed to heal her, teams up with the landlord was a contributing factor to the escalating of her dilemma.
Ironically, the music in her head is the reggae that lends rhythm to the poem but is a running commentary on the urban affliction that has caused the rhyme to stick in her mind. The “ribbit” is the DJ’s expression of the music itself.
Using the coordinates of dub poetry, Breeze commented on the condition of the woman in a society such as this. Her madness is indivisible from the economic situation that she confronts and the official operators represented by the doctor and the landlord. Throughout the poem there are hints of the abuse of women who are then condemned by the society that has failed them. The mad woman’s poem is the raving of the rhythm – the reggae music that comments on the social conditions that ring ceaselessly in the woman’s head. Breeze thus cleverly utilised the form of dub poetry to articulate the condition of the woman.
