1: Introduction
Sociology is anathema to poetry. (Linton Kwesi Johnson, BBC 2018)
Poetry … allows me to be a better social scientist. (Sandra Faulkner, 2019: 222)
Linton Kwesi Johnson read sociology at the University of London before making his name as the inventor of dub poetry. Reflecting on his life and work in the radio interview quoted here, he seems to dismiss his studies as a way of passing the time until he found his real calling: a performance art that brings together words and music.
While Johnson seems to insist that poetry has nothing to do with the study of society, others are not so sure. Sandra Faulkner, a researcher in the field of communication, suggests the opposite: that poetry allows her ‘to be a better social scientist’ (Faulkner 2019:222). Zygmunt Bauman, the influential sociologist, said he had ‘personally learned more about the society we live in from Balzac, Zola, Kafka, Musil, Frisch, Perec, Kundera, Beckett … than, say, from Parsons’ and others who are routinely cited in his academic field (Blackshaw 2002:2; see also Jacobsen and Marshman 2008). Johnson contradicts himself, in any case; he has never stopped examining society, analytically and critically. His poetry speaks of race and racism, class and inequality, and it narrates and explores social conflicts and crises: from police brutality to struggles over public housing. These are the preoccupations of many social researchers, extending far beyond the discipline of sociology to include human geography, anthropology, cultural and religious studies and more, within and beyond universities and academic enquiry.
If poetry and other forms of creative writing were once seen as anathema to social research – and it is a big if – this is no longer true.
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