Levi Tafari was born in Liverpool in 1960 to parents of Jamaican origin. He has published four collections of poetry:Duboetry (the Windows Project, 1987), Liverpool Experience (Michael Schwinn, 1989), Rhyme Don't Pay (Head -land, 1993) and From the Page to the Stage (Headland, 2006). His plays have been performed at the Unity Theatre and the Playhouse in Liverpool, as well as at the Blackheath Theatre in Stafford. He has also worked on educational projects, running creative writing workshops in schools, colleges, universities, youth centres, prisons and libraries. His musical projects include working with the Ghanaian drum and dance ensemble Delado, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and with his own reggae fusion band Ministry of Love. He has also played with Urban Strawberry Lunch and Griot Workshop and has recently worked with jazz musician Dennis Rollins. Levi was talking to Dave Ward at the Windows Project office on Bold Street, Liverpool, in February 2006.

LT: I was born and raised in Liverpool. My parents came from the island of Jamaica, so that had a huge influence on me. My Mum worked in Crawfords, the biscuit factory. My dad did joinery – he worked in Courthaulds, up in Aintree. My parents, particularly my Mum, were immersed in the oral tradition. When Mum used to be in the kitchen, cooking, she used to come out with little rhymes, stories, proverbs and riddles from Jamaica.

When I grew up in Liverpool, in the sixties and seventies, there was a large Jamaican population. There used to be sound systems and they would play the latest tunes. And coming out of Jamaica in the seventies were deejays, people like Big Youth and I-Roy – and they used to pick up the mic and they would put this poetry together based on a popular rhythm. Then when the reggae poets came along, they started taking a reggae rhythm, not a specific rhythm, but they would just develop the poetry around a reggae feel. So rather than take a popular song that was out there like the deejays used to do, the Jamaican reggae poets – or Dub poets as they became known – would highlight the rhythm to words that they created.