Alternative Anthem
Selected Poems (with DVD)
John Agard has been broadening the canvas of British poetry for the past 30 years with his mischievous, satirical fables which overturn all our expectations. "Alternative Anthem" is a live album of poems from books published over three decades, including "John Agard Live!", a DVD of filmed highlights from recent performances made by filmmaker Pamela Robertson-Pearce. It includes poetry from "We Brits" in which the Guyanese-born word magician gives an outsider-insider view of British life in poems which both challenge and cherish our peculiar culture and hallowed institutions; "Weblines" that contains three powerful Caribbean myths of transformation: the steeldrum, the limbo dancer, and Anansi, the spider trickster god; and, "From the Devil's Pulpit" that is a Devil's eye view of the world, sweeping from Genesis across time; and, other collections including "Mangoes and Bullets" and "Lovelines for a Goat-Born Lady", as well his children's books, featuring some of Agard's best-known poems - "Listen Mr Oxford don", "Palm Tree King", "Half-Caste", and "English Girl Eats Her First Mango".
Poet, performer, anthologist, John Agard was born in Guyana and came to Britain in 1977. His many books include eight from Bloodaxe, From the Devil’s Pulpit (1997), Weblines (2000), We Brits (2006), Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (2009), Clever Backbone (2009), Travel Light Travel Dark (2013), Playing the Ghost of Maimonides (2016) and The Coming of the Little Green Man (2018). He is the winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2012, presented to him by The Queen on 12 March 2013. He won the Casa de las Américas Prize in 1982, a Paul Hamlyn Award in 1997, and a Cholmondeley Award in 2004. We Brits was shortlisted for the 2007 Decibel Writer of the Year Award, and he has won the Guyana Prize twice, for his From the Devil's Pulpit and Weblines. The Coming of the Little Green Man is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. He lives with the poet Grace Nichols and family in Sussex; they received the CLPE Poetry Award 2003 for their children’s anthology Under the Moon and Over the Sea (Walker Books).
