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RESEARCH PRODUCT

"Dis poem is still not written." A Study of Diamesic Variation in Jamaican Dub Poetry

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International audience; This paper looks at diamesic variation in the works of Jamaican and Anglo-Jamaican dub poets such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah and Mutabaruka. Dub poetry constitutes a turning point in the history of literature in Creole, since the genre achieved to establish Patwa as the legitimate medium for Caribbean writers, thereby effectively inverting (post)colonial linguistic hierarchies. Though closely associated with the reggae tradition, dub poets have always claimed to be doing “real” literature and published their work in written form as well as in audio or video recordings. The paper analyses various strategies to inscribe orality and orature in written texts, and conversely how oral performances make use of elements of literacy and literature, creating hybrid, oraliterary poems. Diamesic variation is correlated to diastratic variation along the (post)Creole continuum, bearing in mind the ideological debates surrounding literacy in Creole and various – and often inconsistent – attempts at transcribing Creole through orthographical codes.