 Good evening. Welcome everybody and an especially warm welcome to our friends and partners in the Living Knowledge Network across the UK. My name is Jamie Andrews. I lead here at the British Library on our cultural programming and our learning and education work. I'm delighted, we're all delighted to welcome back the Penn Pinter Prize into the British Library for the 2020 prize giving ceremony. You can see probably I'm here in the British Library in London. We are reopening our sites in London and in the north. And here in our London site in St Pancras, many of our reading rooms and our exhibitions are open. And we have a major new show, Unfinished Business, The Fight for Women's Rights, that launches shortly. But for obvious reasons, our cultural events programming has gone digital this year. And that's different, of course it is. We'll miss the warmth of all your human presence and company and energy. It's different, but by no means a diminution, indeed quite the opposite. Already with our digital online program, we found that we're reaching more people than ever we could in a physical theatre, more people from across more of the UK and in a more open and I think inclusive way. So those circumstances have forced our hand. We hope and truly believe that this year's Penn Pinter Awards will be the biggest and the best yet. The Penn Pinter Prize, it's been hosted here at the British Library since 2009. It was established in memory of Harold Pinter. Harold was a great friend of ours and his archive lives on here at the Library. And the awards awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit. I'd just like to thank everyone who's made this event happen. My colleagues here at the library in our cultural events team, our friends and longtime partners at English Penn. And of course last but not least and in fact most importantly all our thanks and admiration to Antonia Fraser. So have a wonderful evening, I'm sure you will. And now with great pleasure I'll hand over to the President of English Penn, Philippe Sands. Hello, I'm Philippe Sands and I'm very delighted to welcome you on behalf of English Penn and Lady Antonia Fraser to this year's Penn Pinter Prize Award Ceremony. It's the 12th such ceremony and it's founded in honour and memory of Harold Pinter, the wonderful writer. To celebrate writing and writers who fulfil his vision as set out in his Nobel Prize winning speech. When he spoke about our obligation to define what he called the real truth of our lives. Through unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual engagement. We're so very pleased to be holding this ceremony once again in partnership with the British Library which holds the Pinter Archive. And I want to thank formally Claire Armistead, Charmaine Lovegrove and Max Porter for their wonderful judgement in selecting Linton Quasey Johnson as the winner of the Penn Pinter Prize 2020. I've known his writings, I don't know him personally and they've inspired me for so many years. But I really like what the judges said of his work. He's a poet, reggae icon, academic, campaigner, whose impact on the cultural landscape of the last half century has been colossal and multi-generational. His political ferocity and his tireless scrutiny of history are truly pinter-esque as is the humour with which he pursues them. I want to thank warmly the British Library for hosting the award and making it possible to be held for the first time in this way online. The prize would not be possible without the support of very generous funders and I would like to thank in particular the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Ruth Maxded. Special thanks also due to the cartoonist, my friend, Martin Rosen, who traditionally draws a cartoon on some cricketing theme in homage to Harold Printer, which is presented to the winner. Our thanks also to Jay Bernard for their new commission in tribute to Linton Quasey Johnson, which is going to be premiered this evening. Thank you Dottie Irving, Truda Sprite and Alexander Hamilton for four communications for helping English Penn to publicise the prize. The Pinter Prize asks the winner in association with English Penn's Writers at Risk programme to choose a fellow international writer who shares the prize. Linton Quasey Johnson will announce the winner late in the evening. On behalf of English Penn and its wonderful membership as we approach our centenary year on which you'll be hearing more in due course. It's my very great pleasure to introduce Professor Paul Gilroy, Professor of Humanities and Founding Director of the Sarah Parker-Ramon Centre for the study of racism and racialisation to the stage to introduce this year's winner, Professor Gilroy. I would like to thank English Penn for the opportunity to participate in this ceremony and in particular for the chance to put my profound appreciation of Linton Quasey Johnson's literary and political achievements on record. Johnson's poems accomplished a rare feat. They explored the life experience of a marginalised group poetically with such power that the work won recognition not only as compelling and beautiful, but as faithful. In other words, his poetry was understood to be truthful. That judgement was made immediately, close to the moment of expression, not awarded four decades and more later with the benefit of hindsight. In the vernacular philosophical language of the Black Freedom movement to which Johnson's work has made such notable contributions, the idea of truth is linked to the pursuit of right and rights. And there is a loud, unruly demand for justice here too. It is endured beyond the historical circumstances from which it emerged. My own relationship with Linton's poetry really began with the publication of his second volume of poems, Dread, Beat and Blood. The impact of that encounter was formative. I was delighted by it and shocked that there were so many resonances with my own outlook, my observations and experiences. Things that had appeared to be personal and subjective were charged with a wider significance. A Fanonian revolutionary politics, distinguished by its determination to take the question of culture seriously, was clearly audible. But that insurgent spirit had been melded into a mode of modernist expression. It was influenced by militant voices from the United States Black Arts movement, but also seemed in places to be signifying on the work of the most revered and modernist poets. The patois voice was dominant, but it was not the only voice. This was a polyvocal, a populist modernism. Equally appreciative of the demotic poetry of the reggae toasters and the lyrical heights of records half heard through the fog of intoxication in the blues dance. It was tuned into political and historical commentary on Britain via the word play of the Jamaican sufferer DJs, Iroy, Big U. Its romantic elements were counter-pointed by an italic, a dub-wise sensibility. Long before the musical components of Linton's performances were formalized through his bardic collaborations with the legendary Dennis Bovell, our Mozart, and a number of others, there was an implicit music here. That music was reggae, though not only reggae, because reggae itself was changing, it was growing and responding to African-American and other Black Atlantic influences. In the parties and dances, the rhythm side, the version side of the 45, was becoming a dub cut. What Linton named bass culture, characterized by a playful mix of comedy and menace, was slowly giving way to the extreme seriousness of what can only be called a dub aesthetic. The pointed, pleasurable undoing of familiar song structure and sound, which had become routine, was now being associated with an analogous process of creativity in language. Linton's writing took poetry beyond the definition of verse as a sequence of figures of spoken sound. Dub-wise, his words let us hear the sound of bursting out of slave shackles. Scatter, matter, shatter, shack, what a beat. The results of these innovations was absolutely faithful to the lived experience of young Black people during that time of ferment and conflict, especially with the police. Dread-beaten blood included a poem, litigated to the memory of David Oluwale, killed by the only British police officers ever brought to book for their cruelty. Oluwale's is a name like those of Asceta Sims, Blair Peach, Mark Duggan and many, many others that should be as famous and celebrated in this country as those of George Floyd and the other African-Americans who've met similar fates. Looking back 40 years and more, Linton Johnson's work not only makes a valuable bridge between the generation of the Caribbean artist movement, Andrew Salki, Gamal Braithwaite, Bongo Jerry, John LaRose, and the revolutionary moment of the 1970s. It also constitutes a vibrant link with contemporary concerns, which appeared different when placed in the light of Linton's own life and writing as a settler who cultivated art which could resonate at both ends of his journey. This poetry took the substance of worthless racialized lives and made it poetic as part of larger struggles to win recognition, dignity, worth and humanity itself from a machine that did not perceive Black people as human and saw young Blacks only as a criminal problem. Re-reading Johnson's early work, we can discover him finding his own voice and finding ours on our behalf. It's rare for a poet to speak so authentically and so authoritatively. His great achievement is that without, I imagine, intending to do so, he became something like the voice of a whole generation. I'm delighted to be presenting the 2020 Penn Pinter Prize to Linton Quasie Johnson. When Penn founded the prize just after Harold died in 2008, immediately I thought it was a brilliant idea. The idea of a writer who speaks out a great writer and who also has great compassion for sufferers from human rights of any sort. And that was Harold and that's why Linton Quasie Johnson is such a very good person to receive it this year because he's got all those qualities. He speaks out and he's also got another quality which he shares with Harold. He's got humour. Harold cared passionately about human rights but he also liked humour so I think they have a lot in common and therefore with much pleasure I give it to you. Well I'm very pleased to have been awarded the English Penn Pinter Prize. I'm not going to make a big speech only to say that I wasn't really aware of what a big deal it was until people kept on sending me messages of congratulations from all over the place. One inquisitive friend in Jamaica asked how much money are you getting Linton because I know the English are very mean and I said not a lot. I said the prize is the money is small but the honour is huge. Okay so I'm going to recite a few poems here which might give some indication of why I've been selected for this prestigious prize. And they're from my collection of poems, selected poems which are dealing with the black experience in Britain throughout the 70s, 1970s, 1980s to the end of the 20th century. Now when I was a youth growing up it was clear, perfectly clear to the black youth of my generation that the police, the metropolitan police force had declared war against us. And in a sense that war has been a protracted one because even my grandson's generation are subjected to that war. Indeed nowadays even if you are a world-class athlete with a young baby or a serving police officer or indeed a member of parliament once you're black you're not immune to police intimidation and harassment. Now during the 1970s in the war that the police were waging against my generation one of the weapons they used was a piece of legislation called the Vagrancy Act which goes back to the time of Queen Victoria. But we knew this law in our community as the sus law, sus being short for suspicion, invariably you would be arrested and charged with attempting to steal from persons unknown. And there was a campaign to get rid of this unjust law. I know a lot of mothers from Louisham were involved in that campaign. Anyway I contributed this poem called Sonny's Letter, Brixton Prison, Jeba Venue, London South West 2, England. Dear mama, good day. I hope that when these few lines reach you they may find you in the best of health. Mama, I really don't know how to tell you this because I did make a solemn promise to take care of little Jim and try my best to look out for him. Mama, I really did try my best but nonetheless, Miss Sara, if you tell yourself poor little Jim, get a rest. It was the Michael at the rush hour when everybody just a hustle and a bustle to go home for them evening shower. Me and Jim stand up waiting for our boss, not causing no fuss, when hard on a sudden a police van pull up, out jump three police man who are them carrying baton, them walks straight up to me and Jim. One of them hold on to Jim so I'm taking him in. Jim tell him to let go of him for I'm not doing nothing and I'm not teeth, not even a button. When Jim starts to wriggle, the police start to giggle. Mama, make a tell you what I'm doing to Jim. Mama, make a tell you what I'm doing to him. Them thump him in the belly and they turn to jelly. Them licking on him back and him rib get pop. Them licking on him head but it tough like lead. Them kick him in the seed and it started to bleed. Mama, I just couldn't stand up there and I do nothing. So I took one in him eye and him started to cry. Me thump one in him mouth and him started to shout. Me kick one in him shin and him started to spin. Me thumping on him chin and him drop panabin and crash and dead. Mama, more police man come down and beat me to the ground. Them charge Jim fae sauce. Them charge me for murder. Mama, don't fret. Don't get depressive down artily. Be of good courage till I hear from you. I remain your son, Sonny. In the history of the black experience in Britain in the post World War II period, the most significant date is the year 1981. Because in that year, we had the insurrections and uprisings and riots in all of the inner city areas of England beginning in Brixton. We had the Black People's Day of Action on the 2nd of March 1981, which was the greatest expression of black political power ever seen in this country in the 20th century. Between 15,000 to 20,000 people marched from New Cross in southeast London to Hyde Park to protest the death, the killing, the racist fascist murder of 13 young black people. And the year had in fact begun with the actual fire at 439 New Cross Road, which we call the New Cross Massacre. Anyway, in spite of the efforts of the gutter press and some of the broadsheets with their campaign of lies and disinformation, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee was still able to mobilize between 15,000 to 20,000 people and shut down a lot of London on the 2nd of March 1981. But this next poem is called, this poem is called New Cross Massacre. It's a long poem, so I'm not going to do all of it. I'm just going to give you, I'm just going to do bits of it. First, the coming and the going in and out of the party, the dubbing and the rubbing and the rocking to the rhythm, the dancing and the skanking and the party, really swinging, the laughing and the talking and the styling in the party, the moving and the grooving and the dancing to the disco, the joking and the jiving and the joy of the party. Then the crush and the bang and the flame start the drum, the heat and the smoke and the people start to choke, the screaming and the crying and the dying and the fire, the panic and the pushing and the boring through the fire, the running and the jumping and the flames summarizing higher, the weeping and the mourning or the horror of the fire. 1982 was a significant year in my own personal life. My father, who never came to England, who remained in Jamaica, lived in the ghettos of West Kingston. My father died that year at the age of 56 and I wrote an elegy for him, which really is also a poem about Jamaica during the early 1980s. It's called Reggae Fidada, Galang Dada, Galangua Neasa. You never had no life to live, just the one life to give. You did your time for an earth, you never get your just desert. Galangu smile in the sun, Galangu sata in the palace of peace. Oh, the water, it's so deep, the water, it's so dark and it full ahabashak. The land is like a rock slowly shattering to sun, sinking in a sea of calamity, where fear breeds shadows that lurks in the dark, where people free at the walk, free at the think, free at the talk, where the present is haunted by the past. Addessa me barn, get finu about storm, learn ficling to the dawn. And when me hear me dad is sick, me quickly pop me grip and take a trip. Me never have no time when me reach, fist in a sunny beach when me reach. Just people living in shock, people living back to back, monks, cockroach and rat, monks, dirt and disease, subject to terrorist attack, political intrigue, constant grief and a sign of relief. Oh, the grass turned brown, so many trees cut down and the land is overgrown. From country to town is just tislantan, you know, the woe, not the poor. It's a miracle of the manure, the peonite and deer, the stench of the care, the glaring sights of guarded affluence, the arrogant vices called eyes of contempt, the mocking symbols of independence. Addessa me barn, get finu about storm, learn ficling to the dawn. And when the news reach me, send me one daddy dead, me catch a plane quick. And when me reach me sunny isle, it was the same old style, the money well dry, the bullets dem a fly, plenty inner center die, many rivers run dry, ganja planes flying high. The poor money might try, you think a little trim try, hold it on, buy and buy, when a dollar come, buy a little dinner for your fly. Galang dada, galang gwan yawasa. You never had no life to live, just the one life to give. You did your time on earth, you never get your just desert. Galang gwan smile inner the sun, galang gwan sata inner the palace of peace. Me know you couldn't take it, dada. The anguish and the pain, the suffering, the problems, the strain, struggling in vain to make two ends meet, so that dem picnic could a get a little something to eat, to put clothes upon dem back, to put shoes upon dem feet, when a dollar come, buy a little dinner for your fly. Me know you tried, dada. You fight a good fight, but the dice dem did lower than the card, park fix. Yet still, you reach 56 before you lose your leg wicket. I know you're born grown here, so we bury you astray and just burying grown, near to moman cousin Daris, not far from the quarry, down at Augustown. The next poem is called New World Order, and how I came to write this poem was that I can't remember exactly when towards the end of the 90s that the term ethnic cleansing gained currency. But it's an expression that I hate with a passion, because when you talk about ethnic cleansing, you're presupposing that there is something called ethnic pollution, and as far as I'm concerned to my simple way of thinking, that is the dehumanization of language and the language of dehumanization. Language is, we define our humanity through language, and it's very important that we're very careful about how we use language. It's almost like a normalization of bestiality, ethnic cleansing. So New World Order. And it's not just the fact that the term had gained currency that inspired the poem, there were some acts of barbarism going on in the late 80s, early 90s, in the period just before and in the period immediately after the end of the Cold War. That is the context of the poem. The killers of Kigali must be sanitary workers, the butchers of Butari must be sanitary workers, the savages of Chattila must be sanitary workers, the beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers in the New World Order. Like a dirty old bandage pandefestering fierce high humanity, the old order unravel and reveal old scar just broke out in a new sword, primeval wound that time will heal, and in the ancient currency of blood, tribal tyrants, a sacred world score. The killers of Kigali must be sanitary workers, the butchers of Butari must be sanitary workers, the savages of Chattila must be sanitary workers, the beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers in the New World Order. And it's the same old keen and able syndrome far more ancient than the fall of Rome, but in the New World Order of atrocity is a brand new language of barbarity. Mass murder normalize, pogrom rationalize, genocide sanitize, and the ancient clancing, nonium ethnic cleansing. And so the killers of Kigali must be sanitary workers, the butchers of Butari must be sanitary workers, the savages of Chattila must be sanitary workers, the beasts of Bosnia must be sanitary workers. Pram pram pram! You know the New World Order. So I'm just going to do one more, because it's the first poem I wrote in the 21st century, because I wrote this poem in the year 2000. And it was a poem for a member of parliament for Tottenham, Bernie Grant, the late Bernie Grant. And I wrote this as an elegy for him when he died. Bernie Grant in 1987, the first four post-World War two black members of parliament were elected, were Keith Vaz, Diana Bot, Paul Boatting, and Bernie Grant. Of the four of those pioneering members of parliament, Bernie Grant was the only one who really had any grassroots support because he'd been a councillor in Tottenham for many years. And he was very popular in the black communities up and down the country. And the poem is called BG for Bernie Grant in Memoriam, 1934 to 2000. Like a skilled tradesman, you pee of the way, from the shop floor to the council chamber, all the way up to parliament front door. And then you enter as a member. And we remember the eruption over Tottenham, Mrs. Jaratatatak, Dona Brixton, Detective Lovelock, short cherry-gross in her back, the reagent, the storm, the debt of P.C. Blair Clark, Brad Waterfarm. You was with chief, you was with chai, you was with champion, you was with face, you was with vice, you was with me and man. And we remember how the press and the rest tried to lynch you, how them tried to tire and feather you, how they hurried and gave massive rally around you, how you make black people feel proud of you. And we remember how you build a unity in your community, dedicate yourself to your constituency, brace your broad back against bigger tree, and stand firm for justice and equality. You was with chief, you was with chai, you was with champion, you was with face, you was with vice, you was with me and man. Them said that if you're going into politics, you have to feel well tough and can't take no flicks. You was with Ali in a prime, you jabbed them with your left, you hook them with your right, and you take true force and beat them every time. Now it sound like Lord Abel's a trifle tall, your tail, but a fear your precedent are going to prevail. Them don't know how the past and get him gone, but I'll know, Mr. Lahir, fear your soul. You was with chief, you was with chai, you was with champion, you was with face, you was with vice, you was with number one. Keeping a citizen incarcerated, incommunicado, without charge or trial for nearly 20 years, is the kind of egregious brutality that we associate with totalitarian states and dictatorships. From the list of world nominees, as a gesture of solidarity from a poet of the African diaspora, I have chosen the Eritrean poet, songwriter, critic and journalist, a Manuel Astrat as the writer of courage for 2020. Dear English pen members, dear guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased, honored and humbled to accept this award on behalf of my brother, Manuel Astrat. Special thanks and warmest congratulations to this year's pen-price winner, the extraordinary Linton Quacy Jensen, who chose to share the prize with Manuel Astrat. Thanks to English pen and pen Eritrea. It is with mixed feelings that I am accepting the award today. I am extremely glad my brother was chosen to receive the award on one side. On the other side, it pains me that my brother, a young and promising poet and courageous journalist is still suffering under the harsh conditions of the dungeons in Eritrea for 19 years and counting. Note that the international community is still silent, while Amanel and many more others remain behind the powers in Eritrea for just expressing their political opinions and practicing their faith. The sole crime of Amanel and other prisoners of conscience in Eritrea is standing for truth and justice. Having said that, let me give you an insight into who Amanel Astrat was. Before that, let me say something about Eritrea, also known as African North Korea. Eritrea is a northeast African country on the Red Sea coast. It shares borders with Ethiopia, Sudan and Djibouti. Eritrea became an independent country after the longest struggle on the continent in 1991. Since its independence, Isaias Aforki and his sole party, PFDJ, are ruling the country with iron faith. Eritrea is ruled by fear and not by law, as UN investigation has indicated. There is no freedom of press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of faith and no freedom of assembly in the country. As per the UN report, there are more than 10,000 prisoners of conscience in the country. Some say the actual number is three times more. My brother, Eritrean journalist and poet Amanel Astrat has been incarcerated since September 23, 2001 in an undisclosed maximum security prison along with other journalists and former government officials who demand reform. Amanel born in July 1971 was a graduate of soil science and water conservation. He is credited for Eritrea's poetry Resurgence of 2000s. An award-winning poet and critic Amanel with two colleagues has funded grassroots literary clubs around across the country. Amid the political crackdown and banning of the private newspapers, Amanel was taken into custody in the morning of September 23, 2001. Apart from unauthorized rumors, mainly through former prison guards who have fled the country, the whereabouts of Amanel and his colleagues is unknown and there has never been an official statement by the Eritrean authorities. I have no doubt in mind that you can imagine how painful it is for parents to lack information about whereabouts of their child for 19 years and counting. This award will help Amanel assume his proper place and do recognition internationally. I wish Amanel could somehow be aware of this tremendous honor and recognition. This award will also serve to uplift the spirit of our family. Thank you English pen and all for keeping Amanel in your thoughts and prayers. Moreover, thank you for constantly remembering and reaching Amanel's family. Thank you all again. I wish Amanel could somehow be aware of this tremendous honor and recognition. I wish Amanel could somehow be aware of this tremendous honor and recognition. This is my voice. He keeps singing. I sing the same thing as him. He sings that way. But he's always singing. He's always singing. We're always singing that way. We're always singing that way. Dentsiwa, Grame Taangila, Tedenadina, Zuriakha Asi Amela. Mismen Kik Tseghaa, Abel Ketadibi, Nabea Ketadimi, Nabea Kedderibi. It is Maragin, Hummau, Tzeyma Tsebbau, Ba'ath Eet Harisu, Ka'abahewa Tafsisu, Halifat Kaptenfas, Golgulu, Numot Bumot, Atsidu, Abzvan Gurdakhidu, Amasiyu. Amasiyu, Netafre, Apsidat, Tafliu. Netafre, Ma'alitin, Leitin, Hadayi, Kunua, Sha'olotungruftan, T'hawawisua. Alem mawushda alem, Kunata Wushda Salam, Imned, Abhugwazil Lut Ilmed. Misra'id, Dentsiwa, Dentsiwa. As Maraginat, Ta'abah Sanatu, Nib'at Addeinulada, Nib'at Nda, Netarista, Nib'at Merita. Wihizu, Wihizu, Wihizu, Miszare, Ba'itam, Tseghawe, Mis'alke, Nawutti, Shamimu, Nukum Musallimu, Misrase. Ashabu Fariyu, Badela Afraza, Ashabu Falfilu, Magnaz Gareza. Yekidaz, Ashabu Duma, Yehalukh Kulwishamu, Kullinan Adeliyu, Kullinan Ununu. Nagarquinat, Tkufu'u, Azmaru'u, Khidela Khayyu, Misbatsah. Igar Mqalu'u, Maachukhamu, Zulkur. Shruyu, Shruyu, Abesahquinat, Abesahzat Gamadih. Gna, Kaifataka'a Tassasio, Kaidela Khaa Tassasio, Arhiyu, Kahat Imgin. Abed, Abed, Tsegliu, Amani El-Asrat, Tsegha'atam, Tsegha'atam. The scourge of war, something growled, something boomed, invading the calm it echoed. Stuck, where two brothers pass each other by, where two brothers meet, where two brothers join in the piazza of life and death. In the gulf between calamity and culture, in the valley of anxiety and peace, something boomed. While the cheer and sorrow acacias spat at each other, Sorghum and Millit cut each other down with no one to collect them, they feed on one another, until a single seed remains, brimming with tears, being chopped, hacked, sowed unto itself, planted in earth, yet to gush in that indiscernible thing. Stream of blood and water, the seed assailed by the freezing sun, tempestuous nimbus cloud, grayish lighting, scalding rain, slipping through littered iron, climbing onto the spirit of death, shouldering its sterile life. Here it is grasped at spring, the seed, arrived on its own from the blood and water, yet to gush. Whos and to whom unassertained, its tributaries unidentifiable, when it parted that spring, but in that spring, when the seed looked to the right, he was a man, it was a beard. When it looked to the left, he was the earth, it was a seed bewildered. It fed on amazement, tempted, but joining forces is not like it. Who should stick with? Who should it stick with? Where should it lurk? Who should it win over or be thrown at? But that spring's dirtiness is its ugliness. It plowed with the beak of bullets, spilled infinite lives, swept breath, reaped death with death, threshing it on the shoulders of our offspring, finally bruised the fruit in distrust for the fruit. When day and night became one, anxiety and calm mingled. A world within a world, war within peace, trust in betrayals backdoor. It sunk in bewilderment. Is it not bewildering? The scourge of this spring of war after a mother's tear for her children, the clan's tear for its time, the earth's tear for the earth, flowed and flowed like a stream. Soon the earth became wet and muddy, the property mired in trapping all, robbing them. Then the shovel and the pick were produced and the shroud and the stretcher sprang up. But how fast everything is used up and everyone scrambles for us. All of us crave and own it. The ugliness of this thing, war, when its spring arrives unwished for, when its ravaging echoes knock at your door, it is then that war's curse bruised doom. But you serve it willy-nilly, unwillingly, you keep it company. Still you pray so hard for it to be silenced. Thank you all for joining us for this wonderful ceremony. And on behalf of English Penn, I'd like to offer my deepest congratulations to President Lyndon Quasey-Johnson and Emanuel Asrad, the winners of this year's Penn Pinter Prize. It's also been an honour to be joined by Emanuel's family this evening. Sincere thanks too to my fellow judges of this year's prize, Charmaine Lovegrove and Max Porter, whose clarity and unanimity in selecting Lyndon as our winner was an absolute joy. Thanks also to the British Library and to all the supporters of English Penn who make our work possible. In particular our core funders, Arts Council England, the TS Eliot Foundation, the Sigrid Rousing Trust, our Silver Penn and Project Partners, and of course above all our members. As a membership organisation we depend especially on these members to support our mission to be fiercely independent, international in outlook and deeply engaged in current and vital conversations around freedom of expression in the UK and also internationally. We wish you could all be with us in person for this very special occasion, but as we celebrate the work of this year's winners we also think of the many others who cannot be with us, even virtually. We think of our imprisoned colleagues around the world, including Nedim Tufent in Turkey, Narjes Mohamedi in Iran and former Penn Pinter Writers of Courage, Raif Badawi and Walid Abu Qa'i of Saudi Arabia. Writer to writer solidarity has long been at the heart of Penn's work in support of writers imprisoned or otherwise at risk and tonight's celebration is of course no exception. For decades members of Penn have supported fellow writers in countless ways, including sending letters of solidarity. The impact of such simple acts cannot be underestimated and countless writers have told us how much this support has meant to them. Ahead of English Penn centenary next year, we're delighted to launch our new campaign, PennWrites, a year-long letter writing campaign in solidarity with writers at risk around the world. We invite all of you to join us in celebrating and supporting writers of courage across the globe, including this year's International Writer of Courage and our first featured writer of PennWrites, Emmanuel Azrat, by writing messages of support to them and also to their families. You can find more details of the campaign as well as other activities in our exciting centenary programme, Common Currency, on English Penn's website. Our members are critical to us continuing this important work, so if you have not already joined English Penn, we ask that you consider doing so. And now, to close the ceremony, I'm honoured to introduce Jay Bernard, who will be reading a newly commissioned piece they've created especially for this equation. England Street, Reggae for Linton. The front line in the 80s started here. On Railton Road that leads up to Herne Hill, a bridge. A skeleton that stands above the clouds, deserted once, now demolished, now sold. The soul of not so long ago remained, if you know poets' corner, branching from the main and back suburban roads. All sceptres stretched from Loughborough to Ephrae to Tulse Hill was once the scene of war, of lightning in the land. Those voices, cold, now mingled with the mud, are conjured by their name. Each street or tomb and dub is that same echo remix then delayed by slow filtration, one time through the smoke and sweat, two times through the hostile, staring crowds, until somewhere the inspiration strikes. Night sweats and tradition mark the voice that sings most clearly that which Chaucer wrote and Shakespeare knew. The drumbeat and vocals vibrate through the dark, the spaces inside US sound disembarked and softly remixes the beat of your heart over siren. South London was a pasture once and will be once again, but in between the Prioresse and Dizzy Ross School, England was reset. Our voice collective, like the black starlings, murmur, the red fire of the front line now embers, the bleeding stanched, there is no riot here. Now faceless, sightless virus offers grim niceties where once they told it how it is, the boys in blue they hated you, MPs social workers too, spat in the street, killed students from the colonies and burned us, put protesters in cells with psychopaths all night. By morning all the evidence was lost, like a corto known through works of other men, a foreigner can archive every bruise but rumour and the poet know the drill. No national restatement can disprove what Milton and the others said direct, what King Tubby started, Johnson would perfect. All history traversed, one beat to the next, all England in a single street traversed, the footwork of a shadow with a bomb thrown high comes to us of a tide marks where the brickwork was restored, five nights of bleeding visible in stone. Dread, beat and blood came pouring that same year as Yorkshire's Ripper, Thatcher's Swamp, Altab Ali, with Anderson breaks out and Coldwell's shot. Ford closes due to strikes and strikers ration bread, the headlines they're more striking than today's, today's less striking than what is to come. The paradox of history as time descends is that it has been said, will be said again. The silence you keep in your heart every day, the ghosts of your conquest will keep peace away. The things that you know in your heart but don't say, oh the siren. The voice of a friend that you don't recognize, speaks only to that which supports all his lies. The turning of heavens, a trick of the eyes, oh the siren. Libraries are very, very important as a human resource, as a social resource, as a cultural resource. Libraries played a significant role in my life, particularly in particular the Brixton Library, unfortunately named after a guy named Tate, Tate Library in Brixton. I don't think I would have been able to get through my A-levels without access to that library. At the time I was, I was, I wasn't that old, but I was a matureish kind of student, and I had a young family, so it was a refuge of peace and quietness where I could go, access books for my A-levels, because I left school with six A-levels but no A-levels and I needed A-levels to get into university. So, you know, I don't, I don't know what I would have done without Brixton Library. It was a good place to hang out and meet people as well. I met all kinds of people, some of whom I later, later on became friends with, were, when I met the more complete strangers. Brixton Library has another significance for me. I think it was the first library I was able to find any books by Caribbean authors. I remember finding a novel, or a collection of short stories called Miguel Street by V. S. Nipol, an anthology of Caribbean poetry edited by Andrew Selke called Breaklight, and a book by the Barbadian author, Austin Clark. I think that was called Meeting Point. So, as the first time I ever came across books in public libraries, which I could identify with and locate my own experiences in those books. I think that was largely down to the excellent librarian we had in Brixton was a woman, an English woman, called Janet Hill. And Janet Hill did all she could during her tenure to make the library accessible for everybody to make it inclusive, if you like. Very, very nice lady, Janet Hill. I don't know if she had anything to do with it, but I suspect she did. But the library in the London Borough of Lambeth in 1977 had a fellowship, a writer's fellowship called the Sea Day Lewis Fellowship. I'm named after the English poet, Cecil Day Lewis. And I was lucky enough to win the Sea Day Lewis Fellowship. And I was based at Brixton Library. That was my base. I was based at Brixton Library for nine months. And I think I did two days a week or something. People would bring me their writings and I would write little comments and give them advice and so on. Not that I was an expert on writing. I was still learning my craft. There you go. So, yeah, Brixton Library, that library played a pivotal role in my own development. I love libraries.