Bridget Minamore | |
---|---|
Born | 1991 (age 31–32) London, England |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University College London |
Occupations |
|
Website | bridgetminamore |
Bridget Minamore (born 1991) is a British poet, essayist, journalist and critic. She is the author of the 2016 poetry collection Titanic, and her writing has appeared in such outlets as The Guardian , The Stage , i , The Fader , The White Review [1] [2] [3] [4] and in anthologies including New Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby). [5]
Bridget Minamore was born in London, England, in 1991, of Ghanaian parentage. [6] [7] She has an English degree from University College London. [8]
She has read her poetry nationally and internationally and in 2013 was shortlisted to be London's inaugural Young Poet Laureate. [9] [8]
In 2015, she was chosen as one of The Hospital Club's Emerging Creatives. [8] Minamore's debut pamphlet, entitled Titanic, was published in 2016, [10] described by LUX Magazine as "a collection of poems which hilariously and hauntingly dissect what it means to love another... writing with a spotless humour and style that tangos with your emotions." [11] In 2018, she co-founded the collective "Critics of Colour" with playwright Sabrina Mahfouz, with the aim of "making writing about theatre, dance, and/or opera more accessible". [12]
Minamore has written regularly for The Guardian , The Stage and other publications about pop culture, theatre, music, race and class. [13] She is a contributor to the 2019 anthologies New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby, [14] and Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art, and Making It Happen, edited by Sabrina Mahfouz. [15]
Dame Carol Ann Duffy [] is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly gay poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Naomi Long Madgett was an American poet and publisher. Originally a teacher, she later found fame with her award-winning poems and was also the founder and senior editor of Lotus Press, established in 1972, a publisher of poetry books by black poets. Known as "the godmother of African-American poetry", she was the Detroit poet laureate since 2001.
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, succeeding Mervyn Morris. In 2019, she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Grace Nichols FRSL is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Eintou Pearl Springer is a poet, playwright, librarian and cultural activist from Trinidad and Tobago. In May 2002, she was named Poet Laureate of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
Michelene Dinah Wandor, known from 1963 to at least 1979 as Michelene Victor, is an English playwright, critic, broadcaster, poet, lecturer, and musician.
Salena Godden is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other, jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first woman with Black heritage to win the Booker.
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is a South African writer and performance artist who performs her work nationally and internationally. She is noted for her poetry, which has been published in collections and in many magazines and anthologies, as well as for her autobiographical one-woman show, Original Skin, which centres on her confusion about her identity at a young age, as the biracial daughter of an Australian mother and a Ghanaian father who was adopted and raised by a white family in apartheid South Africa. She has written: "I became Phillippa Yaa when I found my biological father, who told me that if he had been there when I was born, the first name I'd have been given would be a day name like all Ghanaian babies, and all Thursday girls are Yaa, Yawo, or Yaya. So by changing my name I intended to inscribe a feeling of belonging and also one of pride on my African side. After growing up black in white South Africa, internalising so many negative 'truths' of what black people are like, I needed to reclaim my humanity and myself from the toxic dance of objectification." She has also said: "Because I wasn't told that I was adopted until I was twenty, I lacked a vocabulary to describe who I am and where I come from, so performing and writing became ways to make myself up." As Tishani Doshi observes in the New Indian Express: "Much of her work is concerned with race, sexuality, class and gender within the South African context."
Warsan Shire is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize, chosen from a shortlist of six candidates out of a total 655 entries. Her words "No one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark", from the poem "Conversations about Home ", have been called "a rallying call for refugees and their advocates".
Sabrina Mahfouz is a British-Egyptian poet, playwright, performer and writer from South London, England. Her published work includes poetry, plays and contributions to several anthologies.
Ber Anena born and previously published as Harriet Anena is a Ugandan writer and performer, whose writing includes poetry, nonfiction and fiction. She is the author of a collection of poems, A Nation In Labour, published in 2015, won the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. The Economist described her poetry performance as "an arresting evocation of love and war".
Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora, edited and introduced by Margaret Busby, who compared the process of assembling the volume to "trying to catch a flowing river in a calabash".
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award.
Malika Booker is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist, who is considered "a pioneer of the present spoken word movement" in the UK. Her writing spans different genres of storytelling, including poetry, theatre, monologue, installation and education, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Organizations for which she has worked include Arts Council England, the BBC, British Council, Wellcome Trust, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arvon, and Hampton Court Palace.
Danielle Legros Georges is a Haitian-born American poet, essayist and academic. She is a professor of creative writing in the Lesley University MFA Program in Creative Writing. Her areas of focus include contemporary American poetry, African-American poetry, Caribbean literature and studies, literary translation, and the arts in education. She is the creative editor of sx salon, a digital forum for innovative critical and creative explorations of Caribbean literature.
SuAndi OBE is a British performance poet, writer and arts curator. Based in North West England, she is particularly acknowledged for raising the profile of black artists in the region as well as nationally. Since 1985 she has been Cultural Director of the National Black Arts Alliance. She was appointed an OBE in 1999 for her contributions to the Black Arts sector.
Lisa Allen-Agostini is a Trinidadian journalist, editor and writer of fiction, poetry and drama. She is also a stand-up comedian, performing as "Just Lisa".
Agnès Agboton is a Beninese writer, poet, storyteller, and translator. She currently lives in Spain. She is of Fon descent, and writes in several languages, including Catalan, Spanish, and the Gun language. She has written several books about African food and culture, and is known for her work in transcribing and translating Beninese folk tales and stories for adults and children. In addition, she has published two bilingual collections of poetry in the Gun language and Spanish. She is considered to be a significant figure in Afro-Spanish writing.
Zena Edwards is a British writer, poet, performer and multidisciplinary collaborator, who explores her African roots in work that utilises her musical talents. She has performed internationally at festivals, as well as in schools and colleges. She has been described as "one [of] the most unique voices of performance poetry to come out of London".