John Agard

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John Agard

Born (1949-06-21) 21 June 1949 (age 76)
Grantham, British Guiana
LanguagePatois
NationalityBritish
EducationSt Alban's Academy
Period20th century
Notable awards Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry (1997); Cholmondeley Award (2004); Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2012)
Spouse Grace Nichols

John Agard FRSL (born 21 June 1949) is a Guyanese-born British playwright, poet and children's writer. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. [1] He was awarded BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2021. [2]

Contents

Biography

Agard was born in British Guiana (now Guyana), and grew up in Georgetown. He loved to listen to cricket commentary on the radio and began making up his own, which led to a love of language. [3] He went on to study English, French and Latin at A-Level, writing his first published poetry when he was in the sixth form, and left school in 1967. He taught the languages he had studied and worked in a local library. He was also a sub-editor and feature writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle , publishing two books while he was still in Guyana. [3]

His father (Ted) settled in London and Agard moved to Britain with his partner Grace Nichols in 1977, settling in Ironbridge, Shropshire. [4] [5] He worked for the Commonwealth Institute and the BBC in London.

His awards included the 1997 Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry, [6] the Cholmondeley Award in 2004 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012. [1] In November 2021 he became the first poet to be awarded BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award. [7] [8]

Agard was poet-in-residence at the National Maritime Museum in 2008. His poems "Half Caste" and "Checking Out Me History" have been featured in the Edexcel and AQA English GCSE anthologies respectively, meaning that many students (aged 13–16) have studied his work for their GCSE English qualifications. [9]

Archival literary records consisting of "letters and proofs relating to the published poetry works of John Agard" are held at Newcastle University Special Collections, in the Bloodaxe Books Archive. [10]

Agard lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with his partner, the Guyanese poet Grace Nichols. [4]

Bibliography

As editor

  • Life Doesn't Frighten Me at All. Heinemann, 1989
  • A Caribbean Dozen (co-edited with Grace Nichols). Walker Books, 1994
  • Poems in My Earphone. Longman, 1995
  • Why is the Sky?. Faber and Faber, 1996
  • A Child's Year of Stories and Poems (with Michael Rosen and Robert Frost). Viking Children's Books, 2000
  • Hello New!: New Poems for a New Century. Orchard, 2000
  • Under the Moon and Over the Sea (co-editor with Grace Nichols). Walker Books, 2002

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 "Poet John Agard is selected for Queen's poetry medal", BBC News, 20 December 2012.
  2. Drabble, Emily (9 November 2021). "'We are all creatures of language': Lifetime Achievement Award winner John Agard on his incredible life and career". BookTrust. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  3. 1 2 John Agard profile Archived 21 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine at Jubilee Books.
  4. 1 2 Dawes, Kwame Senu Neville (2001). Talk yuh talk: interviews with Anglophone Caribbean poets. University of Virginia Press. p. 244. ISBN   9780813919461.
  5. Anne Mette Finderup, Agnete Fog (2010). Worlds of English. Systime. p. 222. ISBN   9788761622426.
  6. Awards for Artists, Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Archived 21 May 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  7. "'Poetry has power' says John Agard, the first poet to be awarded BookTrust's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award". BookTrust. 9 November 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2021.
  8. Flood, Alison (9 November 2021). "John Agard becomes first poet to win BookTrust lifetime achievement award". The Guardian .
  9. "John Agard (1949–)", AQA.
  10. "John Agard", Archives Hub.
  11. "Agard, John". Royal Society of Literature. 1 September 2023. Retrieved 8 July 2025.
  12. Flood, Alison (14 July 2009). "Carol Ann Duffy to judge Old Possum's prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  13. "Poet John Agard is selected for Queen's poetry medal". BBC News (20 December 2012). Retrieved 15 February 2013.
  14. Eyre, Charlotte (9 November 2021). "John Agard wins BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award". The Bookseller . Retrieved 9 November 2021.