Patience Agbabi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Patience Agbabi FRSL
Born	1965 (age 59–60) London, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Pembroke College, Oxford University of Sussex
Occupation	Poet and performer

Patience Agbabi is a British poet and performer who loves to perform her poems out loud. Even though her poems talk about modern topics, she often uses special rules and older styles in her writing. She has described herself as "bicultural," meaning she connects with two cultures. Her poems often explore ideas about race and who you are as a person. She is known for being great at both writing poems and performing them, and for work that easily moves between different cultures, ways of speaking, and voices, whether on a page or on a stage. In 2017, she became a special member of the Royal Society of Literature.

Growing Up and Schooling

Patience Agbabi was born in London. Her parents were from Nigeria. When she was young, she was cared for by a white English family. At age 12, she moved from Sussex to North Wales. She grew up in Colwyn Bay.

She studied English language and literature at Pembroke College, Oxford. Later, in 2002, she earned a master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Sussex. In September of that year, she started teaching creative writing at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Her Poems and Performances

Patience Agbabi started performing in London clubs in 1995. She was part of a group called Atomic Lip. This group was once called "poetry's first pop group." Their last tour was in 1998, called "Quadrophonix." It mixed live performances with video.

In 1996, she worked on a performance piece called FO(U)R WOMEN. She worked with Adeola Agbebiyi and Dorothea Smartt. They first performed it at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. It toured from 1995 to 1998. Agbabi has said that Janis Joplin, Carol Ann Duffy, and Chaucer have influenced her. She also gets ideas from modern music and culture. Her poem "Eat Me" shows her childhood love for cake.

Early Poetry Collections

Her first book, R.A.W., came out in 1995. The poems in it talk about her experiences with Thatcherism, city life, and ideas about race. The style of these poems is very similar to the rhythm and cleverness of rap music.

Her next book was Transformatrix (2000). This book commented on modern Britain. It got ideas from popular music styles. Transformatrix also has Agbabi's first published version of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. She reimagined the Wife of Bath as a Nigerian character named "Mrs. Alice Ebi Bafa."

In 2008, Agbabi published Bloodshot Monochrome. One reviewer said this collection highlights social and political issues. It also looks at moments in time through the eyes of authors from the past. The book offers readers many of Agbabi's views on life in different places. Poet Carol Rumens said that Agbabi often uses poetry to have a conversation with the past.

Telling Tales and Chaucer

From July 2009 to December 2010, Agbabi was the Canterbury Laureate. She received a grant to write a full poetry collection. This collection was based on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The book, called Telling Tales, was published in 2014. It retold each story from the old Middle English work. It gave a modern, 21st-century look at the characters and their stories. This new version used her well-known, lyrical poetry style. It helped redefine British literary traditions.

The book received praise from poets like Simon Armitage. He called it "the liveliest versions of Chaucer you're likely to read." Agbabi still tours with Telling Tales. It is a performance-poetry show. She performs it at literature festivals, art places, and libraries across the UK. She has performed stories like "The Wife of Bafa" and "Tit for Tat (Reeves's tale)."

International Performances and Media

Besides performing in Britain, Agbabi has toured with the British Council. She has read her poems in Namibia, the Czech Republic, Zimbabwe, Germany, and Switzerland. She also took part in Modern Love. This was a spoken-word tour that explored love and modern relationships. It toured the UK and Switzerland.

Her poetry has been on television and radio. It was on the Channel 4 series Litpop in 1998. It was also on the children's show Blue Peter in 1999. She has also contributed to several collections of poems. These include Jubilee Lines (2012), which celebrated Queen Elizabeth II's 60th anniversary on the throne. Another was Refugee Tales (2016), a collection of stories based on accounts from people held at Gatwick airport.

She has taught and led workshops. She has also been a poet-in-residence at various places. These include Oxford Brookes University and Eton College. She even worked at a tattoo and piercing studio in London. In 2018, she was a writer in residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Awards and Special Honors

In 1997, Agbabi's first poetry collection, R.A.W. (1995), won the Excelle Literary Award.

In 2000, she was one of 10 poets asked by BBC Radio 4 to write a poem for National Poetry Day.

In 2004, she was featured on the Poetry Book Society list of Next Generation poets. This list highlights promising new poets.

In 2010, Agbabi was named the Canterbury Poet Laureate for the Canterbury Festival.

In March 2015, The Poetry Society announced Agbabi as one of five poets. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. This was for her book Telling Tales.

In 2017, Agbabi was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Her Books and Collections

• R.A.W., Gecko Press (1995).
• Transformatrix, Canongate Books (2000)
• Bloodshot Monochrome, Canongate (2008)
• Telling Tales, Canongate (2014)
• The Infinite, Canongate (2020)

Books She Contributed To

• Carol Ann Duffy, ed., Jubilee Lines (London: Faber & Faber, 2012)
• Sasha Dugdale, ed., Best British Poetry 2012 (Cromer: Salt, 2012)
• Helen Ivory, ed., In Their Own Words (Cromer: Salt, 2012)
• Rob Pope, ed., Studying English Language and Literature: An Introduction and Companion (Oxford: Routledge, 2012)
• Tom Chivers, Adventures in Form (London: Penned in the Margins, 2012)
• Refugee Tales (Manchester: Comma Press, 2016)
• Margaret Busby, ed., New Daughters of Africa (Myriad Editions, 2019)