Lillian Allen

{{Infobox musical artist

| name = Lillian Allen

| image = Lillian Allen à La Vitrola.png

| alt =

| caption =

| genre = {{flatlist|

}}

| background = solo_singer

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1951|04|05}}

| birth_place = Kingston, Jamaica

| death_date =

| death_place =

| instrument = Vocals

| occupation = {{flatlist|*Poet

Singer-songwriter
writer
activist
Professor

}}

| alias =

| years_active = 1969–present

| label = Verse to Vinyl

| associated_acts = {{flatlist|

Dub Poets Collective
The Parachute Club

}}

| website = {{URL|http://www.lillianallen.ca}}

}}

Lillian Allen (born 5 April 1951) is a Canadian dub poet, writer and Juno Award winner.{{cite web|url=https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lillian-allen-emc|title=Lillian Allen |publisher=Encyclopedia of Music in Canada|access-date=August 25, 2019}}

Biography

Born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, she left that country in 1969, first moving to New York City, where she studied English at the City University of New York.Dawes, Kwame (2000), Talk Yuh Talk: Interviews with Anglophone Caribbean Poets, University of Virginia Press, {{ISBN|978-0-8139-1946-1}}, pp. 148–160. She lived for a time in Kitchener, Ontario, before settling in Toronto, where she continued her education at York University, gaining a B.A. degree.Henry, Krista (2007) [http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070603/ent/ent4.html "Lillian Allen fights back with words"], Jamaica Gleaner, 3 June 2007. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812004508/http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20070603/ent/ent4.html |date=12 August 2011 }}. Retrieved 31 October 2010. After meeting Oku Onuora in Cuba in 1978, she began working in dub poetry. She released her first recording, Dub Poet: The Poetry of Lillian Allen, in 1983.{{citation needed|date=March 2019}}

Allen won the Juno Award for Best Reggae/Calypso Album for Revolutionary Tea Party in 1986 and Conditions Critical in 1988.

In 1990, she collaborated on the one-off single "Can't Repress the Cause", a plea for greater inclusion of hip-hop music in the Canadian music scene, with Dance Appeal, a supergroup of Toronto-area musicians that included Devon, Maestro Fresh Wes, Dream Warriors, B-Kool, Michie Mee, Eria Fachin, HDV, Dionne, Thando Hyman, Carla Marshall, Messenjah, Jillian Mendez, Lorraine Scott, Lorraine Segato, Self Defense, Leroy Sibbles, Zama and Thyron Lee White.{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/urban-music-emc|title=Urban Music|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Music in Canada|access-date=August 25, 2019}} Two years later, she organized a collective of artists, including Ahdri Zhina Mandiela and Afua Cooper, prompting Toronto's First International Dub Poetry Festival.{{cite book|last1=Robertson|first1=Clive|editor1-last=Householder|editor1-first=Johanna|editor2=Tanya Mars|title=Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women|date=2004|isbn=9780920397848|publisher=YYZ Books|location=Toronto|chapter=Lillian Allen: Holding the past, touching the present, shining out the future|pages=102–110}}{{rp|103}}

In 2006, Allen and her work were the subject of an episode of the television series Heart of a Poet, produced by Canadian filmmaker Maureen Judge. She is a Faculty of Liberal Studies Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, where she teaches creative writing. She recently held the distinction of being the first Canada Council Writer-in-Residence for Queen's University's Department of English. Allen also co-produced and co-directed Blak Wi Blakkk, a 1991 documentary about the Jamaican dub poet Mutabaruka.

In 2023, Allen was named to a three-year term as Poet Laureate of Toronto.Deborah Dundas, [https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2023/05/11/lillian-allen-torontos-new-poet-laureate-on-taking-poetry-to-the-citys-street-corners.html "Lillian Allen: Toronto’s new poet laureate on taking poetry to the city’s street corners"]. Toronto Star, May 11, 2023.

Publications

1983 Rhythm an' Hardtimes{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/lillian-allen|title=Lillian Allen|date=11 March 2017|website=Poetry Foundation|language=en-us|access-date=11 March 2017}}
1984 The Teeth of the Whirlwind{{Cite book|editor-last1=Lecker|editor-first1=Robert|title=English-Canadian Literary Anthologies: An Enumerative Bibliography|year=1997|publisher=Reference Press|isbn=0-919981-60-7|oclc=37981570|page=134}}
1987 If You See Truth
1991 Why Me
1993 Women Do This Every Day{{cite web|url=http://www.poets.ca/linktext/direct/allen.htm |title=Lillian Allen |publisher=poets.ca |access-date=20 January 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110316084638/http://www.poets.ca/linktext/direct/allen.htm |archive-date=16 March 2011 }}
1993 Love & Other Strange Things (stage play){{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Mary Elizabeth|date=1997|title="One Must Please to Live": The Survival of Harry Lindley in Atlantic Canada|url=https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/TRIC/article/view/7128|journal=Theatre Research in Canada / Recherches théâtrales Au Canada|volume=18|issue=2}}
1999 Psychic Unrest

Discography

Dub Poet: The Poetry of Lillian Allen (1983)
De dub poets (1985)
Curfew Inna B.C. (1985)
Revolutionary Tea Party (1986)
Let the Heart See (1987)
Conditions Critical (1988)
Nothing But a Hero (1992)
Freedom & Dance (1999)
Anxiety (European release) (2012)

References

External links

[http://www.lillianallen.ca Lillian Allen's Official Website]
[http://soundaddictions.wordpress.com/lillian-allen/ Interview with Lillian Allen: "All the More 'Anxious for a Revolution'"]
{{YouTube|nqW5t6xy4GU|Riddim' An' Hardtimes}}

Category:1951 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century Canadian poets

Category:Jamaican emigrants to Canada

Category:20th-century Black Canadian musicians

Category:Canadian reggae musicians

Category:Canadian women poets

Category:Jamaican dub poets

Category:20th-century Canadian women writers

Category:Musicians from Toronto

Category:People from Spanish Town

Category:Juno Award for Reggae Recording of the Year winners