Nii Ayikwei Parkes grew up in Ghana but was born in the UK where he later returned for further study, where with the friendship and tutelage of fellow black poets he became a vibrant new voice in British performance poetry. 

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1992, two years after the publication of his most ambitious and celebrated work, Omeros, an epic poem which draws on the Homeric tradition and relocates it in the voices…

Born in south-east London where they still live, Kae Tempest made their live debut as a spoken-word artist at sixteen. Having initially conceived of themselves as a rapper, Tempest found their work was also extremely popular at poetry slams; they…

Canadian poet Richard Harrison is a shrewd writer who is as much concerned with the question of poetry and its composition as he is personal histories; his poems are discursive and self-referential, yet never subordinated to the cerebral in a…