Black British Literature arose in
a dancehall environment through dub and performance poetry. The first
piece was actually a play, Voices of the Living and the Dead, published in
1974 by Linton Kwesi Johnson. His performative mode set the trend for a
wave of dub poetry in the 1980s by new Black British/Rastafarian poets.
Their publications predictably cluster around the years of conflict
between black youth and police in 1980, 1982 and 1985. The novel form made
its first appearance in 1982 with Norman Smith's Bad Friday. From 1985
onward there has been a steady stream of fictional works. Statistics show
that from 1974 to the current period, there has been over 90 novel and
poetry publications. Though the dub poetry form has been dominated by male
voices, this has not been the trend for the novel form. The majority of
the new voices appearing in the latter 1980s and the 1990s belong to the
female novelist.
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