My Words

Roger Robinson is a writer and educator from Trinidad who has taught and performed worldwide. An alumnus of The Complete Works, he is also a co-founder of Spoke Lab poetry collective. His poetry has been featured in a number of prominent anthologies, including The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain and Bloodaxes’ Out of Bounds: British Black and Asian Poets. His authored works include Suckle (flipped eye, 2009), The Butterfly Hotel (Peepal Tree Press, 2013), and A Portable Paradise (Peepal Tree Press, 2019). A Portable Paradise won both the 2019 T. S. Eliot Prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize 2020 for a distinguished work evoking the spirit of a place – in this instance, post-Windrush Britain.

SuAndi OBE is a poet, performance artist, dramatist, librettist and writer. Her three published collections are Style, Nearly Forty and There Will Be No Tears; her one-woman show The Story of M is on the curriculum for A level English Literature and the MA in Black British Literature at Goldsmiths.In her role as the freelance Cultural Director of the National Black Arts Alliance, SuAndi has led members in training weekends, exhibitions and performances as well as producing three pieces of ground-breaking historical research: Afro Solo UK, Voices for Freedom, and Strength of Our Mothers. She is a Writing Fellow at Leicester University.

Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a British-born poet, writer and filmmaker of Ghanaian heritage. Born and raised in Essex, England, Bulley is an alumna of the Barbican Young Poets, Octavia Poetry Collective and The Complete Works. Her debut poetry collection, Quiet (2022), circles around ideas of black interiority, intimacy and selfhood, and has been described as a ‘poetics of balance’. Also a filmmaker, Bulley directed MOTHER TONGUES, an intergenerational poetry, film and translation project exploring the indigenous linguistic heritages of poets of colour.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian-British writer, poet and editor. Born in London, he grew up in Ghana and returned to the UK, where he became a vibrant new voice in British performance poetry. In 2001 he founded flipped eye, an independent publishing house which has played a key role in the development of many black British poets. He is the author of five poetry books, the most recent of which - The Geez (2020) - was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, described as navigating ‘the blurred lines between age and youth, the real and the imaged; what is seen and what is’. A constant advocate for African writers, Parkes was awarded Ghana’s National ACRAG award for poetry and literary activism. A trustee of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Parkes has also held teaching posts at the University of Southampton and California State University.

Anthony Joseph is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. Joseph began writing as a young child, and was heavily influenced by calypso, surrealism, jazz, Caribbean speech, and the spiritual Baptist church his grandparents attended. He has authored five poetry collections: Desafinado (1994), Teragaton (1998), Bird Head Son (2009), Rubber Orchestras (2011), and Sonnets For Albert (2022). Sonnets For Albert, shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best First Collection, returns to the autobiographical Bird Head Son and measures the impact of being the son of a mostly absent father. His poems are most remarkable for their density of phrasing and use of description and melody, placing him within a Walcottianlineage. A talented musician, Joseph is the lead vocalist for The Spasm Band and has released eight critically acclaimed albums. Other works include the novels Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon (2018) and The African Origins of UFOs (2006).

Mimi Khalvati was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up on the Isle of Wight, England. She trained at Drama Centre London and has worked as an actor and director in the UK and Iran. Khalvati is the author of eight poetry collections, including The Weather Wheel, The Meanest Flower, and, most recently, Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011. She co-founded The Poetry School - the UK’s largest provider of poetry education and opportunities to poets and poetry audiences - and was the Coordinator from 1997–2004. She is a core tutor for the School and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her work has been translated into nine languages, and in 2006 she received a Cholmondeley Award. Of her early influences, she cites Wordsworth and her childhood on the Isle of Wight as ‘very much the wellspring of my poetry’.

Malika Booker is a writer, poet, and multi-disciplinary artist. She is considered a pioneer of the spoken word movement in Britain and is the co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, a writers collective which has produced award-winning poets since its creation in 2001. She is the author of two poetry collections - Breadfruit (2007) and Pepper Seed (2013) - and her poetry features in numerous anthologies. In 2019 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Award for her contribution to poetry, and in 2020, her poem, ‘The Little Miracles’ won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She teaches Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Jacob Sam-La Rose is one of the country’s most inspirational poets. He is the author of two poetry collections, Communion (2006) and Breaking Silence (2011), and his writing appears in many anthologies, including Identity Parade: New British & Irish Poets (2010), Poems For Love (2009), and Red (2010), but it is his collective work across literature that has earned Sam-La Rose the title of ‘one-man literary industry’. Sam-La Rose has played a pivotal role in many projects that have been key to developing a generation of literary talents, such as Barbican Young Poets and the London Teenage Poetry SLAM. He has worked with the Ministry of Education in Malaysia, the British Council, the National Theatre, the Arvon Foundation, the Barbican, the Roundhouse and Apples & Snakes in mentoring young and emerging poets. He says, ‘My work as a poet came to mean more than just being the best writer I could be. For it to exist in the real world, my work has to be bigger than myself, in the same way that so many of my elders worked for the benefit of future generations – and so it extends into changing mainstream attitudes towards poetry, and helping to nurture other emerging poets.’ It is this generosity of spirit and collectivist outlook that sets him apart from many other poets and performers. His collection, Breaking Silence, is taught on the UK’s A-Level syllabus. He currently teaches at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and at Goldsmiths University.