In 1969, Lillian Allen left her hometown of Spanish Town, Jamaica, and moved to New York and then to Toronto, where she received a B.A. from York University. Although Allen had been writing since she was a young girl, her writing career began to thrive during her involvement with community activism and literary groups, with poets such as Clifton Joseph, Devon Haughton, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, and Afua Cooper. In an interview with Dawes, Allen describes how, after watching Onuora and Smith perform in Cuba in 1979, she wanted to bring the style and energy of dub poetry as a recognizable genre to Canadian audiences: