Jean Binta Breeze

Jean Binta Breeze

Jean Binta Breeze is a Jamaican dub poet and storyteller from Hanover, Jamaica, born in 1956 and dying in 2021. She also works as a theatre director, choreographer, actor and teacher, and is a writer and performer with an international reputation.

She grows up in rural Jamaica before living and working in Kingston, where she establishes herself as a writer, performer and recording artist. Her work is rooted in reggae rhythms and reverberations, and she is first known as a dub poet. Breeze studies at the Jamaican School of Drama, alongside figures such as Michael Smith and Oku Onuora, and later connects with Linton Kwesi Johnson, who encourages her to come to Britain.

Her performances take her across Jamaica and internationally, including tours in the UK, the Republic of Ireland, the Caribbean, North and South America, Europe, South East Asia and Africa. She returns to Jamaica to live in 2012 and continues to tour to England each year for readings, workshops and mentoring. Her writing addresses personal, social and political themes, and she brings experience as an actress, dancer, choreographer and theatrical director to her poetry, with a strong stage presence and a theatrical style of performance.