Bennett, Louise. "'Bans O' Killing' by Louise Bennett." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/bans-o-killing-by-louise-bennett. [Date accessed].

"Bans O' Killing" by Louise Bennett

Audio performance by Aisha Ricketts

Download the transcript
Jonathan Hsy
George Washington University

“Bans O' Killing” is a satirical poem written in Jamaican creole or 'patois' by Louise Bennett. In it, Bennett names the historical mechanisms of power and violence that accompany cultural claims of one “standard” English. Channeling Shakespeare and Chaucer as exemplar non-"standard" English writers, she challenges the hierarchies that language policing reinforces. This audio recording was produced for Jonathan Hsy's Throughlines contribution, Chaucer's Englishes.

Further learning

Video

Chaucer's Englishes

Jonathan Hsy traces how a humble 14th-century London dialect became the "standard," and what Chaucer, a Jamaican poet, and a 2025 executive order all reveal about who gets to belong.

Jonathan Hsy

Recommended

Video

Teaching The Wife of Bath's Tale through adaptations

Chaucer's most outspoken pilgrim gets three modern makeovers: an animated film, a spoken-word performance, and a poem staged in a London market. Jonathan Hsy shows how these adaptations open fresh classroom conversations about gender, power, and justice.

Jonathan Hsy
Activity

The epic assignment

Dennis Britton's epic assignment asks students to collaboratively write an epic poem, considering the possibilities and limitations of the epic genre for defining who we are—or want to be—in our present moment. 

‍

Dennis Britton
Video

Comparative epics: Teaching La Chanson de Roland

Contextualizing the political and racializing mission of La Chanson de Roland offers students a perspective on how epics shaped
—and were shaped by—the values of their historical moment.

Adam Miyashiro

Selected annotated bibliography