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Thanks

my thanks to all those who supported me

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who sent me letters of support after I turned down the OBE. It is quite amazing that it was ever offered to me, I have made it absolutely clear in much of my writing that I would never accept an OBE, or the position of poet laureate; I did so hoping that it would never be necessary for me to turn it down. It really does show that these people simply don’t read my work. Now that it has happened I want to thank you all sincerely for your support. I have received 4,000 letters from Britain, and another 1,000 from other parts of the world, many of these letters have come from ex-empire countries and it has to be said that the writers of these letters are not all black or Asian people. What you all have in common is a sense of justice and a passionate desire to move forward.

I made the reasons for my rejection very clear in my Guardian article and so I will assume that you have all read it, I just want to add this; it is people like you who inspire me to write, not the elite, and if an OBE can open doors for me, by definition they are not the doors I want to go through. I don’t think that I did anything great, I just said no and I just said why.

People matter, peace matters, and Justice matters.

Benjamin Zephaniah