MALACHI Smith, South Florida-based Jamaican dub poet, is the headliner for the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia which runs from June 24-30.

He is among 1,120 poets from 127 nations participating in the festival.

SMITH… among 1,120 poets from 127 nations participating in the festival

“I was invited by the organisers of the festival, XX Festival Internacional DE Poesia De Medellin, International Poetry Festival of Medellin. They translated 42 pieces of my poetry into Spanish for the festival,” Smith told the Jamaica Observer.

This will be his first appearance on the week-long festival which started in 1991. Smith now joins poets including Mutabaruka and Tomlin Ellis as poets who have appeared on the festival.

The Westmoreland-born Smith will be appearing every day of the festival.

Smith began writing poetry at the age of eight, and recorded his first poem Kimbo to Kimbo in 1979. His CDs include Blacker the Berry, The Sweeter The Cherry; Throw Two Punch; Middle Passage; Luv Dub Fever; and, Hail

to Jamaica.

He is a fellow of the University of Miami’s Mitchner Caribbean Writer’s Institute where he studied poetry under Lorna Goodison and playwriting under Fred D’aguiar.

One of the readers at the first Talking Trees Lit Fest in May 2011, he is an alumnus of Florida International University, Miami-Dade College and Jamaica School of Drama. He was one of the founding members of Poets in Unity,

an ensemble that brought

dub poetry to the forefront

of reggae music in the

late-1970s, and carried it forward for a decade.

He was adjudged the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s JCDC’s most outstanding writer in the poetry category for 2009. In 2006, he won four awards in the JCDC’s annual Literary Awards for poetry and playwriting. That year he won the Joe Higgs Music Award for dub poet of the year, and was nominated for the dub poet of the year in the Reggaesoca Awards, and for the poet of the year in the Martin’s International Music Awards. He headlined the International Dub Poetry Festival in

Toronto and performed at the Love-In Festival in Miami with Richie Heavens.