Lillian Allen
Dub Poet
Lillian Allen is an originator of Dub Poetry and Rap lyricism, and a ground breaker for women in the field for over 40 years.
Originally influenced by Jamaican Dub Poetry pioneer Oku Onuora and Master Storyteller Miss Lou, Lillian Allen is a writer who moves easily from one artistic discipline to another, emerging with new work transformed and transforming. She moved with her family from Spanish Town, Jamaica, to North America in 1969. She studied at the City University of New York, and has a B.A. from York University in Toronto.
Her first album of poetry with music, Revolutionary Tea Party (1986), was proclaimed a Landmark Album of The Past 20 Years by Ms. Magazine in 1991. She won a Juno award for that album and a second in 1988 for Conditions Critical. (We Shall Take Our) Freedom & Dance, her third album, was released in 1999 by Vancouver’s Festival Records. Lillian has published several books of poetry including Rhythm An’ Hardtimes(1983) and Women Do This Everyday (Women’s Press, 1994). Her work for young people includes three books: Why Me, Nothing But A Hero (for which she also released a recording) and If You See Truth.
As a playwright she produced One Bedroom With Dignity (1987), Love & Other Strange Things(1991 and 1993), and the radio play Marketplace(1995). Her creativity also extends to film, as co-producer and co-director of Blak Wi Blakk…, a documentary on Jamaican dub poet Mutabaruka. Lillian is a recognized authority and activist on issues of diversity in culture, cross cultural learning, and the arts in education for Canadian organizations ranging from the Ministry of Citizenship & Culture, to the National Film Board. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including the first Canadian anthology of it’s kind, THE GREAT BLACK NORTH: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry. Lillian’s inspiring lectures and performances have taken her as far as Jamaica and Switzerland — one highlight in 2013 was her lecture Reloading the Can(n)on: The Poetics of Dub at Harvard University. Allen has also been Writer in Residence at Canada’s University of Windsor. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and active as a performing artist at festivals, clubs, community centres and other vneues around the globe.
As I wrote a form of this many years ago, I re-vamped the piece for a post on Jux when Lillian released her CD ANXIETY in 2012. I will be adapting this again to add more current information. I organized a small European tour and her work was greeted by appreciative poetry passionate folks in Paris, Cork, London, Hay-on-Wye, Bristol and Birmingham. Lillian continues to share her knowledge, to perform, and to participate in community enhancing work where ever she goes. She can be found online through http://lillianallen.ca.
I work with Lillian developing her online presence. I think it’s important to do this work as there are too few platforms highlighting the creative, original and community energising work of artists like Lillian Allen. — Marva
pOetic gEsture
An’ de beat of Toronto
ah rhythm & sway
cannot wait to be embraced
This diverse alive in verse city
where trees grow around the cement
Our new self in concrete
Our feet against concrete
As we go about our ways
Percussion play echoing
learning to love what we have made
softening between brick and cement
a built-up world, steeples and stairs
glass mirrors
sparing for social change
New voices roasted enwrapped in ice
My mother walked from the plane into a fridge
That is Toronto in winter
“The best of times” she says “and the coldest of times”
Incubating a whirl of creativity
And visionary relativities
Ideas swirl, cultural voices unfurl
Making us larger than we are becoming
Dub Poetry, Hip Hop, Opera,
Visual smarts and Community Arts
Toronto in Excelsis!
You Toronto are my water bottle
My arts thirst quencher
No matter how far I roam
You pull me back
Your wide-open welcoming arms
A union formed
Our web of connection becomes visible
With every brush stroke on canvas
every stone carved
with every architects’ vision
every note from the heart
An’ for those who lived strident
and have gone before
Let their names not be forgotten
but be called who they truly are
Lovers of Justice, standing for peace, not war.
And to all the battles fought
Freedom sought on the grounds of Queen’s Park
and Nathan Phillips Square, City Hall
or the roar of communities at Young and Bloor
‘down with inequality, injustice, brutality’
International Women’s Day parade, Caribana jump up
You have made our City strong
A republic of possibilities
A home to belong
We are trees standing in the water
A gathering of tribes
An abundance of hope
A destiny and a destination
from which a future must be forged
We were community before Simcoe
We are Hurons, and visitors and traders
Adventurers and underground railroaders
We are the Iroquois’s promise of unity
We are Kensington and Parkdale, Palmerston and Jane an’Finch
We’re High Park and East York, Forest Hill and Yorkville
We’re Rosedale and Cawthra Square, Regent Park and North York
We’re Bloor Street and Junction, Harbourfront and Eglinton
We are a three million sided heart
And homelessness is us
Our little scar
That part split off
Lost, hiding, frightened, too tired to fight
Or resolved too soon
Needing a way back to the promise
Oh yes, we are the “superman” Joe Schuster penned to paper
An experiment splashed by the waves of Lake Ontario
prancing for a great makeover
The postmodern too slow a nation
It was no slam-dunk from Hubbard to Zanana
We are our parklands, winding creeks, nature preserves
We are free public spaces, ravines of lush graces
protected wetlands
We are the Humber and the Don
“fishing weir”
We are a thousand miles from our longings
Pinning dreams on over twenty thousand street corners
With many bridges to cross over
We are the beat, a city in heat
Alive, diverse and strutting verse
We are new age digital microwave
satellite communicators
Fiber wave optics, print, radio
and Television originators
We are our peoples’ toil in this land
Our dreams alive in this land
A three million sided heart is this land
We are Toronto an experiment gone grand
Lillian Allen, 2009
