Moqapi Selassie: Dub poetry in Birmingham

There is a tradition of underground performance poetry in England which thrives and survives well apart from the big publishing houses and which relies mainly on performance for its survival. Indeed poets like Levi Tafari in Liverpool perform regularly, but do not publish much. This may be due to a certain reluctance on the part of publishers to publish their work, because black performance poetry is by its very nature a poetry of the moment, destined to be heard at a certain occasion, a celebratory event or a social gathering.