Benjamin Zephaniah stayed angry all his life

It was his Mum who started it. She was always singing round the house, turning any stray remark into a rhyme, such as “Let’s go to the show, we have to go now, you know….” Uncle Everett added to it when he’d play the latest records from Jamaica at family parties, the men in their suits all dancing to reggae and ska while he, Benjamin the eldest, would add on verses about cooking. Then there was the time he was called to testify at church and made a rap of “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus” and all the Bible books, forwards then backwards. The pastors named him Zephaniah after that, a prophet’s name. So when people said later that he ought to be a painter, or a car mechanic, he clung to what he’d known since he was eight years old: he was going to be a poet, poet, poet.