Click here to access the poetry recordings of Jean 'Binta' Breeze as well as a brief biography of this author.

Jean 'Binta' Breeze (b. 1956) was brought up by her grandparents who were peasant farmers in rural Jamaica. Breeze is recognized as the first woman performer in the traditionally male-dominated field of 'dub' poetry, a fusion of reggae rhythms and the spoken word, combined with political subject matter. From this page, you can hear the voice of Jean 'Binta' Breeze reading four of her poems, "The arrival of Brighteye-an extract," "Upstream," "earth cries," and "Could it be."

Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded.

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