Zephaniah was born and lived the early years of his life in Birmingham, in the Handsworth District, which he has called the “Jamaican capital of Europe”. He was dyslexic, attended a special school but left aged 13 unable to read or write.

His poetry is strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and is characterized by the rhythms and cadences of speech. Politically aware, he is also keen to reflect what he calls he calls ‘street politics’, particularly issues affecting Black people. The result is what has been described as Performance Poetry. He has also said that his aim is to fight the ‘dead image’ of poetry as an elitist academic discipline, incomprehensible to many, and instead to ‘take [it] everywhere’, including to non-readers.

As a teenager his poetry was already known among Handsworth’s Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities. He went through a negative phase in his young life, gained a criminal record and served a prison sentence for burglary. In his early twenties he grew frustrated with being a black poet communicating with black people only and moved to London.

He became actively involved in a workers co-operative in Stratford, London, which led to the publication of his first book of poetry, ‘Pen Rhythm’ (1980). His second collection of poetry, ‘The Dread Affair: Collected Poems’ (1985), included a number of poems attacking the British legal system.

As his reputation grew so did the number of his collections, including ‘Too Black, Too Strong’ (2001) and ‘We Are Britain! (2002), a collection celebrating cultural diversity in Britain.

Zephaniah’s first book of poetry for children, called ‘Talking Turkeys’, was hugely popular. In 1999 he wrote a novel for teenagers, ‘Face’, the first of four novels to date.

Zephaniah lived for many years in East London but in 2008 began dividing his time between Beijing and a village near Spalding, Lincolnshire.

In 2011, Zephaniah accepted a year-long position as poet in residence at Keats House in Hampstead, London.

He published his long-awaited biography The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, in May, 2018.