Benjamin Zephaniah Tribute — Poetry International Opening
Poetry International opens with a major tribute to Benjamin Zephaniah, hosted by Lemn Sissay and Pauline Black, with Jackie Kay, Michael Rosen, and more.
Why we picked this
Lemn Sissay hosting a tribute to Benjamin Zephaniah on the stage where Zephaniah performed many times over forty years is the right person in the right place — the opening night of Poetry International 2026 is as much a statement about what British poetry owes to its Black writers as it is a celebration of one remarkable man.
Benjamin Zephaniah died in December 2023, and his absence remains a specific kind of loss for British poetry — not the loss of a decorated academic or a prize-circuit regular but of someone who made poetry feel like it belonged to people who had been told, explicitly or not, that it didn’t. He was born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, spent time in prison as a teenager, and then built a decades-long career as a poet, novelist, playwright, and performer who never stopped insisting that the art form was public and political and alive. He turned down an OBE. He wrote for children and for adults and didn’t seem to think the distinction was as important as publishers did.
The tribute opening Poetry International 2026 is hosted by Lemn Sissay — a poet and memoirist whose own story of institutional neglect and eventual recognition echoes something of Zephaniah’s relationship to the British establishment — alongside Pauline Black, lead singer of The Selecter and a figure who has moved between music, acting, and memoir in ways that parallel Zephaniah’s cross-form life. Jackie Kay, the Scottish-Nigerian Makar and author of Trumpet, and Michael Rosen, the children’s poet and broadcaster who has spent decades fighting for literature’s place in public life, are among the contributors.
The Royal Festival Hall gives the evening scale appropriate to its subject: Zephaniah performed there many times, and the building’s history as a venue for democratic cultural ambition since the Festival of Britain in 1951 connects to everything he stood for. Poetry International returns to London as part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary celebrations, and beginning with this tribute is a clear statement about what the festival thinks British poetry should remember.