The British Academy is to pay tribute to the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah next week as part of a night of discussion and performance.
The award-winning poet Jackie Kay is among guest speakers at the first Poetry in protest event on 30 October, which explores how political change can be brought about through verse.
Kay will be joined by the scholar and literary activist Kadija George, as well as the winner of the #Merky Books new writers prize 2019, Monika Radojevic.
Zephaniah, who died in December 2023 only eight weeks after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, was widely recognised for his social conscience. The Labour MP Diane Abbott said after his death that his “political activism carried on alongside his immense literary achievements”.
Liz Hutchinson, director of communications at the British Academy, said: “The Poetry in protest event is part of the British Academy’s new public events programme, which aims to showcase the humanities and social sciences in dynamic and accessible ways.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to count among our Honorary Fellows distinguished poets such as Jackie Kay, and the late, great Benjamin Zephaniah, and we are keen to find new ways to celebrate their work and explore what poetry can tell us about people, societies and cultures over time and place.”
The literary activist Kadija George is the editor of several anthologies including Black Radical, which she was co-editing with Zephaniah when he died in 2023. The event will pay tribute to Zephaniah, who spent his life using poetry to respond to historical and current events.
George said: “Poetry is a great tool to speak truth to power with regards to protest. For some poets, you can’t divide their poetry from their resistance. Benjamin Zephaniah was one of those poets; he was passionate about so many things and his poems were often protests in themselves, which is why he was relatable to so many people.
“This event comes at a crucial time in our lives, when so much miscarriage of justice – national and international – has been brought to public perception; it’s going to be interesting to see the poetry that is produced.”
Kay, who was adopted as a baby by Scottish communists, has spent much of her life at protests. To mark the 30th anniversary of the Glasgow Women’s Library in 2021, she wrote a poem in response to Ingrid Pollard’s exhibition No Cover Up. Pollard used images from the library’s Lesbian Archive or taken herself to showcase various political protests in which British lesbians, particularly Black lesbians, were involved during the 80s.
Kay’s response was a poem titled A Life in Protest, which highlighted the various protests she had attended in her lifetime. Starting from childhood, with her parents taking her to protest against the presence of an American nuclear submarine that sailed into the Holy Loch in Scotland in the early 1960s, the poem covers protests such as marches to free Nelson Mandela, women’s marches and gay pride.
