Benjamin Zephaniah

In his work, Zephaniah drew on his lived experiences of incarceration, racism and his Jamaican heritage. He won the BBC Radio 4 Young Playwrights Festival Award in 1998 and was the recipient of at least sixteen honorary doctorates. A ward at Ealing Hospital was also named in his honour. His second novel, Refugee Boy, was the recipient of the 2002 Portsmouth Book Award in the Longer Novel category. In 1982, he released an album, Rasta, which featured the Wailers performing for the first time since the death of Bob Marley, acting as a tribute to Nelson Mandela. It topped the charts in Yugoslavia, and due to its success Mandela invited Zephaniah to host the president's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1996. A vegan and animal rights activist, as well as an anarchist, Zephaniah supported changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote. In 2003, Zephaniah was offered appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). He publicly rejected the honour, stating that: "I get angry when I hear that word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers, brutalised".

The recorded working language is English, Mandarin and Urdu. The field of work recorded is creative and professional writing, poetry and acting. Work by Benjamin Zephaniah is recorded in the collections of British Library and Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives. Distinctions recorded are honorary doctor of the University of Birmingham, honorary doctor of the University of Exeter, Honorary Fellow of the British Academy and honorary doctorate.

• Name — Benjamin Zephaniah • Birth Name — Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah • Born — 15 April 1958 • Birthplace — Handsworth, Birmingham, England • Died — 7 December 2023 • Years Active — 1980–2023 • Website — https: benjaminzephaniah.com/ • Illustration — Zephaniah reciting a poem in 2015

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah was born on 15 April 1958, in the Handsworth district of Birmingham, England, where he was also raised. He referred to this area as the "Jamaican capital of Europe". The son of parents who had migrated from the Caribbean – Oswald Springer, a Barbadian postman, and Leneve (née Honeyghan), a Jamaican nurse who came to Britain in 1956 and worked for the National Health Service – he had a total of seven younger siblings, including his twin sister, Velda. Zephaniah wrote that he was strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and what he called "street politics", and he said in a 2005 interview: Well, for most of the early part of my life I thought poetry was an oral thing. We used to listen to tapes from Jamaica of Louise Bennett, who we think of as the queen of all dub poets. For me, it was two things: it was words wanting to say something and words creating rhythm. Written poetry was a very strange thing that white people did. His first performance was in church when he was 11 years old, resulting in him adopting the name Zephaniah (after the biblical prophet), and by the age of 15, his poetry was already known among Handsworth's Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities. He was educated at Broadway School, Birmingham, from which he was expelled aged 13, unable to read or write due to dyslexia. He was sent to Boreatton Park approved school in Baschurch, Shropshire. The gift, during his childhood, of an old, manual typewriter inspired him to become a writer. It is now in the collection of Birmingham Museums Trust. As a youth, he spent time in borstal and in his late teens received a criminal record and served a prison sentence for burglary. Tired of the limitations of being a black poet communicating with black people only, he decided to expand his audience, and in 1979, at the age of 22, he headed to London, where his first book would be published the next year. While living in London, Zephaniah was assaulted during the 1981 Brixton riots and chronicled his experiences on his 1982 album Rasta. He experienced racism on a regular basis: They happened around me. Back then, racism was very in your face. There was the National Front against black and foreign people, and the police were also very racist. I got stopped four times after I bought a BMW when I became successful with poetry. I kept getting stopped by the police, so I sold it. In a session with John Peel on 1 February 1983 – one of two Peel sessions he recorded that year – Zephaniah's responses were recorded in such poems as "Dis Policeman", "The Boat", "Riot in Progress" and "Uprising Downtown".

• Illustration — Zephaniah performing in 2011 Having moved to London, Zephaniah became actively involved in a workers' co-operative in Stratford, which led to the publication of his first book of poetry, Pen Rhythm (Page One Books, 1980). He had earlier been turned down by other publishers who did not believe there would be an audience for his work, and "they didn't understand it because it was supposed to be performed". Three editions of Pen Rhythm were published. Zephaniah said that his mission was to fight the dead image of poetry in academia, and to "take [it] everywhere" to people who do not read books, so he turned poetry readings into concert-like performances, sometimes with The Benjamin Zephaniah Band. His second collection of poetry, The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985), contained a number of poems attacking the British legal system. Rasta Time in Palestine (1990), an account of a visit to the Palestinian occupied territories, contained poetry and travelogue. Zephaniah was poet-in-residence at the chambers of Michael Mansfield QC, and sat in on the inquiry into Bloody Sunday and other cases, these experiences led to his Too Black, Too Strong poetry collection (2001). We Are Britain! (2002) is a collection of poems celebrating cultural diversity in Britain. He published several collections of poems, as well as novels, specifically for young people. Talking Turkeys (1994), his first poetry book for children, was reprinted after six weeks. In 1999, he wrote his first novel Face – a story of "facial discrimination", as he described it – which was intended for teenagers, and sold some 66,000 copies. Poet Raymond Antrobus, who was given the novel when he had just started attending a deaf school, has written: "I remember reading the whole thing in one go. I was very self-conscious about wearing hearing aids and I needed stories that humanised disability, as Face did. I was still struggling with my literacy at the time, and I understood Benjamin as someone who was self-taught and had been marginalised within the education system. And so he really felt like an ambassador for young people like me." Zephaniah's second novel Refugee Boy, about a 14-year-old refugee from Ethiopia and Eritrea, was published in August 2001. It was the recipient of the 2002 Portsmouth Book Award in the Longer Novel category, and went on to sell 88,000 copies. In 2013, Refugee Boy was adapted as a play by Zephaniah's long-time friend Lemn Sissay, staged at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In May 2011, Zephaniah accepted a year-long position as poet-in-residence at Keats House in Hampstead, London, his first residency role for more than ten years. In accepting the role, he commented: "I don't do residencies, but Keats is different. He's a one-off, and he has always been one of my favourite poets." The same year, he was appointed professor of poetry and creative writing at Brunel University London. In 2016, Zephaniah wrote the foreword to Angry White People: Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right by Hsiao-Hung Pai. Zephaniah's frank autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, was published to coincide with his 60th birthday in 2018, when BBC Sounds broadcast him reading his own text. "I'm still as angry as I was in my twenties," he said. The book was nominated as "autobiography of the year" at the National Book Awards. The Birmingham Mail dubbed him "The people's laureate". On the publication of his young adult novel Windrush Child in 2020, Zephaniah was outspoken about the importance of the way history is represented in the curriculum of schools.

Zephaniah made minor appearances in several television programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, including The Comic Strip Presents... (1988), EastEnders (1993), The Bill (1994), and Crucial Tales (1996). In 1990, he appeared in the film Farendj, directed by Sabine Prenczina and starring Tim Roth. He was the "castaway" on the 8 June 1997 episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, where his chosen book was the Poetical Works of Shelley. In 2005, BBC One broadcast a television documentary about his life, A Picture of Birmingham, by Benjamin Zephaniah, which was repeated by BBC Two on 7 December 2023. In December 2012, he was guest editor of an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Today, for which he commissioned a "good news bulletin". Between 2013 and 2022, Zephaniah played the role of preacher Jeremiah "Jimmy" Jesus in BBC television drama Peaky Blinders, appearing in 14 episodes across the six series. In 2020, he appeared as a panellist on the BBC television comedy quiz show QI, on the episode "Roaming".

In 1982, Zephaniah released the album Rasta, which featured the Wailers' first recording since the death of Bob Marley as well as a tribute to the political prisoner (later to become South African president) Nelson Mandela. The album gained Zephaniah international prestige and topped the Yugoslavian pop charts. It was because of this recording that he was introduced to Mandela, and in 1996, Mandela requested that Zephaniah host the president's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Zephaniah released a total of seven albums of original music.

Zephaniah was connected with – and served as patron for – many organizations that aligned with his beliefs.

Zephaniah became a vegetarian at the age of 11, and then became a vegan at the age of 13, when he read poems about "shimmering fish floating in an underwater paradise, and birds flying free in the clear blue sky". He was an honorary patron of The Vegan Society, Viva!, and EVOLVE! Campaigns, and was an animal rights advocate. In 2004, he wrote the foreword to Keith Mann's book From Dusk 'til Dawn: An insider's view of the growth of the Animal Liberation Movement, a book about the Animal Liberation Front. In August 2007, he announced that he would be launching the Animal Liberation Project, alongside People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In February 2001, his book The Little Book of Vegan Poems was published by AK Press.

Zephaniah spoke extensively about his personal experiences of anti-Black racism in Britain and incorporated his experiences in much of his written work. In 2012, Zephaniah worked with anti-racism organisation Newham Monitoring Project, with whom he made a video, and Tower Hamlets Summer University (Futureversity) about the impact of Olympic policing on black communities. In that same year, he also wrote about cases of racially abusive language employed by police officers and "the reality of police racism that many of us experience all the time". In November 2003, Zephaniah was offered appointment in the 2004 New Year Honours as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), for which he said he had been recommended by Tony Blair. But he publicly rejected the honour and in a subsequent article for The Guardian, elaborated on learning about being considered for the award and his reasons for rejecting it: "Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised... Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire."

Zephaniah spoke in favour of a British republic and the dis-establishment of the Crown. In 2015, he called for Welsh and Cornish to be taught in English schools, saying: "Hindi, Chinese and French are taught [in schools], so why not Welsh? And why not Cornish? They're part of our culture." Zephaniah supported Amnesty International in 2005, speaking out against homophobia in Jamaica, saying: "For many years Jamaica was associated with freedom fighters and liberators, so it hurts when I see that the home of my parents is now associated with the persecution of people because of their sexual orientation." In 2016, Zephaniah curated We Are All Human, an exhibition at London's Southbank Centre presented by the Koestler Trust, which exhibited art works by prisoners, detainees and ex-offenders. Zephaniah was a supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and joined demonstrations calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, describing the activism as the "Anti Apartheid movement". He was also a supporter of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.

Zephaniah self-identified as an anarchist; observing in a 2022 interview: "...there are places that live without government and live peacefully and happily. A lack of power means people of course aren't fighting over it and the main objective of society is to look after each other." He appeared in literature to support changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote for electing members of parliament to the House of Commons in the Alternative Vote referendum in 2011. In a 2017 interview, commenting on the ongoing Brexit negotiations, Zephaniah stated: "For left-wing reasons, I think we should leave the EU but the way that we're leaving is completely wrong." In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated: "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."

Zephaniah's family was Christian, but he became a Rastafarian at a young age. He gave up smoking cannabis in his thirties. He lived for many years in east London; however, in 2008, he began dividing his time between Moulton Chapel near Spalding, Lincolnshire, and Beijing in China. He was a keen language learner and studied Mandarin Chinese for more than a decade. Zephaniah was married for 12 years to Amina, a theatre administrator. His infertility – which he discussed openly – meant that they could not have children and his criminal record prevented them from adopting. They divorced in 2001. In 2017, Zephaniah married Qian Zheng, whom he had met on a visit to China three years earlier, and who survives him. In May 2018, in an interview of BBC Radio 5 Live, Zephaniah admitted that he had been violent to a former partner, confessing to having hit her. He said that he really regretted it later, saying "It burned my conscience so badly. It really ate at me, you know". His cousin, Michael Powell, died in police custody, at Thornhill Road police station in Birmingham, in September 2003 and Zephaniah regularly raised the matter, continuously campaigning with his brother Tippa Naphtali, who set up a national memorial fund in Powell's name to help families affected by deaths in similar circumstances. He was a supporter of Aston Villa F.C. – having been taken to matches as a boy, by an uncle – and was the patron for an Aston Villa supporters' website, as well as an ambassador for the club's charity, the Aston Villa Foundation.

• Pen Rhythm (1980), Page One, • The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985), Arena, • Rasta time in Palestine (1990), Shakti Publishing Ltd., • City Psalms (1992), Bloodaxe Books, • Inna Liverpool (1992), AK Press, • Talking Turkeys (1994), Puffin Books, • Propa Propaganda (1996), Bloodaxe Books, • Funky Chickens (1997), Puffin, • School's Out: Poems Not for School (1997), AK Press, • Funky Turkeys (audiobook) (1999), Puffin, • Wicked World! (2000), Puffin Random House, • Too Black, Too Strong (2001), Bloodaxe Books, • The Little Book of Vegan Poems (2001), AK Press, • Reggae Head (2006), spoken word audio CD, 57 Productions, • To Do Wid Me (2013), Bloodaxe Books, feature film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce released on DVD with accompanying book, • Dis Poetry (2025), Bloodaxe Books,

• Face (1999), Bloomsbury (published in children's and adult editions) • Refugee Boy (2001), Bloomsbury • Gangsta Rap (2004), Bloomsbury • Teacher's Dead (2007), Bloomsbury • Terror Kid (2014), Bloomsbury • Windrush Child (2020), Scholastic,

• We Sang Across the Sea: The Empire Windrush and Me (2022), Scholastic. – a biography of Mona Baptiste written by Zephaniah and illustrated by Onyinye Iwu.

• Kung Fu Trip (2011), Bloomsbury • The Life And Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), Simon & Schuster

• Playing the Right Tune (1985) • Job Rocking (1987). Published in Black Plays: 2, ed. Yvonne Brewster, Methuen Drama, 1989. • Delirium (1987) • Streetwise (1990) • Mickey Tekka (1991) • Listen to Your Parents (included in Theatre Centre: Plays for Young People – Celebrating 50 Years of Theatre Centre, 2003, Aurora Metro; also published by Longman, 2007) • Face: The Play (with Richard Conlon)

• Didn't You Kill My Brother? (1987) – Rufus • Farendj (1989) – Moses • Dread Poets' Society (1992) – himself • Truth or Dairy (1994) – The Vegan Society (UK) • Crucial Tales (1996) – Richard's father • Making the Connection (2010) – Environment Films / The Vegan Society (UK) • Peaky Blinders (2013–2022) – Jeremiah Jesus

• Rasta (1982), Upright (reissued 1989), Workers Playtime (UK Indie #22) • Us An Dem (1990), Island • Back to Roots (1995), Acid Jazz • Belly of De Beast (1996), Ariwa • Naked (2005), One Little Indian • Naked & Mixed-Up (2006), One Little Indian (Benjamin Zephaniah Vs. Rodney-P) • Revolutionary Minds (2017), Fane Productions

• Dub Ranting EP (1982), Radical Wallpaper • Big Boys Don't Make Girls Cry 12-inch single (1984), Upright • Free South Africa (1986) • Crisis 12-inch single (1992), Workers Playtime

• Empire (1995), Bomb the Bass with Zephaniah & Sinéad O'Connor • Heading for the Door by Back to Base (2000), MPR Records • Illegal (2000), from "Himawari" by Swayzak • Theatricks (2000), by Kinobe • Open Wide (2004), Dubioza kolektiv (C) & (P) Gramofon • Rebel by Toddla T (2009), 1965 Records • New Dawn (2009) by Pat D & Lady Paradox • Take A Ride and I Have A Dream (2013) by L.B. Dub Corp

The authorities additionally record the headings Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah and Benjamin Springer. His recorded languages were English, Mandarin and Urdu. His recorded confession was Rastafari. Other recorded relations include Mikey Powell.

Benjamin Zephaniah is recorded as having received honorary doctor of the University of Birmingham, honorary doctor of the University of Exeter and Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. Career and activity. Zephaniah worked in creative and professional writing, poetry, acting and music. His work is associated with Postmodernism. He belonged to British Academy.