I just remembered that Michael Smith had a very slim volume of poetry published by City Lights way back when. I'll have to look for it when I get home.
Found it.
It A Come, Published by City Lights in 1989. 27 poems, 61 pages.
Interesting that City Lights would publish it, since all the poems are written in dense Jamaican
patois that only bears a passing resemblance to English. The editor, Mervyn Morris, wrote a long introduction that quotes Smith talking about how he wrote (I say 'wrote' because he was murdered in 1983) poems:
"Or sometimes a rhythm come to me first. You know, is a rhythm, and me seh, 'Dah rhythm-ya feel nice, you know, feel nice.' And then me try remember the rhythm...and then I build under that, build up under that. Build under that and catch me breaks and the bridges. Just like how a musician a work out."
Which is interesting because I always find the best poets deal instinctively with rhythm, if not purposely like Smith.
For a few years there - the late 1970's to the mid 80's - dub poetry was very popular. But it kind of came and went. It was a natural extension of the deejay culture (that gave birth to hip hop), but then electronic dancehall came along and kind of made all the previous forms of reggae obsolete for a while.
Lots of really cheap copies of
It A Come are
available on ABE for anyone who is curious.