Mikey Smith

Strong political convictions not only provided the spice for Mikey Smith's dub poetry, but resulted in his being stoned to death during a political struggle in Jamaica's Stony Hill district. The incident inspired a poem, Stone, by Kamau Brathwaite. Smith, who once explained his approach to poetry by claiming, "Me is a man who have built-in rhythms in my head and me can hear dem," was a model of contradictions. Although he claimed to despise the poetry of Wordsworth and Shakespeare, he filmed a video of his interpretation of a William Blake poem. ~ Craig Harris