Malika Booker

Malika Booker (born 1970)[1] is a British poet, writer and artist. She is considered "a pioneer of the present spoken word movement" in the UK.[2][3] 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.[4]

Biography

Malika Booker was born in London, UK,[1] to Guyanese and Grenadian parents. She grew up in Guyana and returned to the UK aged 13, with her parents.[5]

Booker began writing and performing poetry while studying anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.[5] She founded the poetry collective Malika's Kitchen, which also included Nick Makoha. Her first collection of poetry, Pepper Seed, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for best first full collection published in the UK and Ireland.[6] She was the inaugural Poet In Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.[7]

Booker's poem "Nine Nights", first published in The Poetry Review in autumn 2016, was shortlisted for Best Single Poem in the 2017 Forward Prize.[8]

Awards

In 2019, Booker received a Cholmondeley Award for her outstanding contribution to poetry.[9]

Selected works
  • 1998: Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry. Ed. Karen McCarthy (The Women's Press)
  • 2000: IC3: The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing. Eds. Courttia Newland and Kadija Sesay (Penguin)
  • 2004: KIN: Commemorative Tour Anthology (Renaissance One)
  • 2004: The Way We See It, The Way It Is (Lynk Reach)
  • 2007: Breadfruit (flipped eye publishing). ISBN 9781905233175
  • 2012: Hidden Gems Volume Two: Contemporary Black British Plays. Ed. Deirdre Osborne (Oberon Books). ISBN 1849436983
  • 2013: Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press) ISBN 9781845232115
  • 2017: Penguin Modern Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body by Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire. (Penguin). ISBN 0141984023
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References
  1. "Malika Booker" at Forward Arts Foundatione.
  2. World Literature Today. University of Oklahoma Press. 1999.
  3. Sissay, Lemn (1998). The Fire People: A Collection of Contemporary Black British Poets. Payback Press. ISBN 9780862417390.
  4. "Malika Booker" at British Council, Literature.
  5. "Malika Booker « The British Blacklist". www.thebritishblacklist.com. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  6. "Malika Booker - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  7. Sweeting, Lynn (2016). WomanSpeak, A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, Volume 8, 2016. ISBN 9781329888364.
  8. "Malika Booker on Forward Prize shortlist for poem published in The Poetry Review", The Poetry Society, 12 June 2017.
  9. "Malika Booker receives Cholmondeley Award", University of Leeds Poetry Centre, 19 June 2019.
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