Anthony Joseph at Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Poetry Library

This year, Anthony was invited to make a selection of records to inaugurate the Poetry Library’s audio collection at Manchester Poetry Library, part of Manchester Metropolitan University. Now, Anthony will be introducing this collection, playing selected records as part of a special lecture that blends music and poetry. He will be joined by Andrew John on bass, who has been a mainstay of Anthony’s core of musicians for over 10 years.

Anthony Joseph is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of four poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award, and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His most recent publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. In 2020 a Polish translation of his afro-futurist classic The African Origins of UFOs was published, followed by a Spanish edition of Kitch. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester.