Jean 'Binta' Breeze was born in Jamaica in 1957. She studied at the Jamaican School of Drama with Michael Smith and Oku Onuora. A 'dub' poet, she began to write poetry in the 1970s, performing and recording first in Kingston then in London. She has worked as a director and scriptwriter for theatre, television and film and is joint-editor of Critical Quarterly in London where she works as a lecturer and performance poet. She has performed her work throughout the world, touring in the Caribbean, North America, Europe, South East Asia and Africa.
Her poetry collections include the books Ryddim Ravings(1988), Spring Cleaning (1992) and The Arrival of Brighteye and Other Poems (2000). Several recordings of her work are available, including Hearsay (1994) and Riding on de Riddym (1996). She also wrote the script for the film Hallelujah Anyhow, screened at the British Film Festival in 1990.Her latest book is The Fifth Figure (2006), a sequence mixing poetry and prose which chronicles the lives of five generations of Caribbean and Black British women of mixed ancestry.