Benjamin Zephaniah, a pioneering writer, professor and poet whose work helped to encourage at this time’s technology of British poets and who didn’t shrink back from matters corresponding to racism and social justice all through a greater than four-decades-long profession, died on Thursday. He was 65.
Mr. Zephaniah died from a mind tumor, which was recognized eight weeks in the past, his household mentioned in an announcement.
He was born in Birmingham, England, on April 15, 1958. When he was 22, he moved to London the place a small writer put out his first ebook, “Pen Rhythm,” in 1983. Mr. Zephaniah went on to write down at the least 30 books, for adults as well as for teenagers and children.
His poetry was outlined by humor combined with a robust social message, in addition to his private model and rhythm. He didn’t shrink back from heavy matters, corresponding to racism or environmental points, and he talked about the local weather disaster in his poetry properly earlier than many others did. Mr. Zephaniah’s work was additionally taught in school rooms in England, making him a recognizable identify for kids and adults alike.
“His poems packed a punch for social justice,” mentioned Judith Palmer, the director of the Poetry Society, a British arts group. She described them as mild and humorous on the identical time.
One such poem is “Talking Turkeys,” printed in 1994, through which Mr. Zephaniah mixes his kindness towards animals (he became a vegan at 13) with humor and rhythm:
Be good to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos’ turkeys simply wanna hav enjoyable
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are depraved
An each turkey has a Mum.
He additionally recorded a number of albums of music and poetry, carried out in venues of all sizes and, between 2013 and 2022, had a recurring position because the character Jeremiah Jesus within the hit present “Peaky Blinders,” which was set in his hometown, Birmingham.
Mr. Zephaniah was recognized for being unapologetically Black and for opening the door to future generations of poets of coloration to make use of their very own voices. He had a big affect on youthful generations in Britain’s poetry neighborhood, Ms. Palmer mentioned.
“He overturned ideas of who a poet could be,” she mentioned.
Mr. Zephaniah was additionally recognized for making the “British establishment somewhat uncomfortable,” mentioned Nels Abbey, an writer and co-founder of the Black Writers Guild, a corporation that represents skilled and rising British writers of Black African and Black African Caribbean heritage.
In 2003, Mr. Zephaniah rejected the Order of the British Empire, which is awarded to individuals for achievements in varied fields, as a type of protest towards British imperialism. “Stick it, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen,” he said at the time. “Stop going on about the empire.”
“I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality,” Mr. Zephaniah wrote in an essay in The Guardian in 2003.
All through his life, he embraced his identification as a Black Brit, sporting his hair in lengthy locs. His work was influenced by Jamaican music and poetry, and he at all times targeted on social justice. He was additionally a professor of artistic writing at Brunel College close to London.
Mr. Zephaniah was open concerning the racism he encountered in Britain and was recognized to level out injustices when he noticed them. In 2014, because the patron of the Newham Monitoring Challenge, a community-based antiracism group in London, he created the marketing campaign “Stop and Search on Trial,” which sought authorities accountability for the best way the police stopped and searched individuals.
“We want to make sure they are doing the right thing,” Mr. Zephaniah said at the time. “We want to get young people to talk about their experiences when they get stopped, to report things, and we want to make young people aware of their rights.”
He was additionally among the many most immediately recognizable poets in Britain. “Any street he walked down,” Ms. Palmer mentioned, “there’d be people crossing the road to greet him.”
After his dying, Raymond Antrobus, a London-based poet, remembered him as “someone who was never silent.”
“He spoke up bravely with fierce integrity and clarity,” mentioned Mr. Antrobus, who first skilled Mr. Zephaniah’s charisma and stage presence as a younger baby when he attended, collectively together with his father, an anti-apartheid demonstration in Parliament Sq. in London through the early Nineteen Nineties.
“That is such a powerful memory of mine,” Mr. Antrobus mentioned, “because it has informed and instilled my entire career.”
