PEN RHYTHM

First edition, first printing. Original stapled card wrappers, the front panel with a black and white photograph of the author, leaning against a tree, over which the title and author are given in 'dripping' red typography. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean and bright throughout. A touch of toning and some light marking to the rear panel. Priced 50p to the rear panel. A lovely, sharp copy of the poet's debut collection. A very scarce volume.

Poetry was crucial to Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-2023) from an early age. The short biography on the poet's website notes that he "cannot remember a time when he was not creating poetry" which, however, "had nothing to do with school where poetry meant very little to him." By the age of fifteen, he had already gained a significant following as a performance poet (and a political voice) in Handsworth, the inner-city area of Birmingham where he grew up ("the Jamaican capital of Europe"). At twenty-two, he moved to London, where his debut collection, 'Pen Rhythm', was issued by the East London-based Page One Books, a modest publishing co-operative based in West Ham Lane. The poems are illustrated by the poet's three-year-old daughter Hannah Zipporah Zephaniah. The book sold well, going into three editions, although copies are now famously hard to come by. In an article published soon after Zephaniah's death, the poet, Lemn Sissay, recalls the first time he came across the older poet's work: "I was about 17 years of age, on a housing estate in Atherton, Manchester and someone gave me a pamphlet stapled together called 'Pen Rhythm'. A couple of years later I published my own pamphlet, stapled together, called 'Perceptions of the Pen'. He's been a guiding light all my life."