Description
The debut pamphlet from The Repeat Beat Poet contains poems written for their utility, their intensity, and their tenderness of spirit. For Peter, these poems function as blessings, memorials, prophecies, and survivor’s guides for soldiering through modern life while being Black in Britain. A writer as comfortable in the cadence of preachers as easily as the flows of rappers, Peter engages his poetry to celebrate life, chronicle suffering, and point towards paths of survival and freedom.
For the poets who are right with us from graveyard to cradle
For the poems that keep us stable
For the poets everywhere
and the poetry that got them there
This is For The Poets
Salena Godden – “Exciting, energetic and revolutionary, this is a brilliant and powerful testament to life and death from one the UK’s most prophetic and passionate new voices.”
Roger Robinson – Tapping into the roots of Hip Hop culture Peter deGraft Johnson’s ‘A Testament To Life and Death’ brings a moving poetic meditation on Black life with a pulse in his words that doesn’t stop; it’s rhythm underlying the Black struggle to survive day to day. Read it now to nod your head and flex your brain.
Musa Okwonga – “These are words that tear at the soul. This is a richly lyrical, passionate and percussive cry for a better world. Exhilarating.”
‘A phenomenal writer and enthralling performer’ – John Cooper Clarke
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Repeat Beat Poet is Peter deGraft-Johnson (PJ), a Hip Hop Poet and broadcaster fusing traditional poetics and Hip Hop culture to capture and extend moments of time, thought, and feeling. PJ has performed across the UK and internationally at venues including the Southbank Centre and Ronnie Scotts in London, performing alongside writers like Margaret Atwood, Salena Godden, and Roger Robinson. He co-founded the Hip Hop open mic night Pen-Ting, created the Spoken Word radio show #TheRepeatBeatBroadcast and hosts the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast.
Peter has been nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship, selected by BBC 1Xtra and the Roundhouse for their Words First and Roundhouse Poetry Collective programmes, and is an Obsidian Foundation fellow. He is published by Magma Poetry, Bad Betty Press, and Poetry On The Picket Line.
Follow Peter on Twitter: @RepeatBeatPoet
