Benjamin Zephaniah (Y6)

Benjamin Zephaniah cannot remember a time when he was not creating poetry. His poetry is strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and what he calls ‘street politics’. By the time he was 15 he had developed a strong following in Birmingham where he had gained a reputation as a young poet who was capable of speaking on local and international issues. In the early 1980s, Zephaniah’s poetry could be heard on demonstrations, at youth gatherings, outside police stations, and on the dance floor. It was once said of him that he was Britain’s most filmed, photographed, and identifiable poet. The mission was to take poetry everywhere: he was out to popularise poetry by reaching people who did not read books, and those that were keen on books could now witness a book coming to life on the stage. This poetry was political, musical, radical, relevant and on TV.

Periodically Benjamin’s band, The Revolutionary Minds, takes to the road. His latest album is also called Revolutionary Minds, and he has just finished recording 3 tracks with the renowned electronic music producer Moby. He has written plays for radio, TV and stage, curated exhibitions at the South Bank Centre and The National Portrait Gallery, he is an actor, social commentator, and then there is Benjamin Zephaniah the children’s poet. His first book of poetry for children called Talking Turkeys had to go into an emergency reprint after just 6 weeks due to its immense popularity. Recently he has published 4 books for children. A novel, Windrush Child, and the poetry books, We Sang Across the Sea, Nature Trail, and People Need People.

Liz Berry's debut poetry collection, Black Country, 'a sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands' (Guardian), won a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018. In her latest book, The Home Child, a novel in verse, she reimagines the story of her great-aunt Eliza Showell, one of the many children forcibly emigrated to Canada as part of the British Child Migrant schemes.