Roger Robinson is an award-winning writer and performer, former Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and a key figure in Black British literature. His acclaimed collections include A Portable Paradise (winner of the T. S. Eliot and RSL Ondaatje Prizes), Home Is Not a Place (British Book Awards shortlist), The Butterfly Hotel, and Suckle.
His work has been translated into five languages and recognised by Decibel as influential to the Black British writing canon.
When a prize-winning collection takes on new meanings in the context of a global crisis.
17th April 2026
Roger Robinson: 'We’re trying to keep this balance to keep racism or things like the darknesses of colonialism and the retention of those things at bay. And I see that as a work of artists.'
In conversation with Gabriel Gbadamosi
16th February 2022
Listen now
Recollections of the bleak cold and seeping sadness of the first years in the UK from Trinidad in the 1980s.
16th March 2026
'I lie as quiet as death in this ‘three for two pounds’ cardboard box'
11th March 2026
Roger Robinson reads his poem, 'The City Kids See the Sea'. Directed by Matthew Thompson and commissioned by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.
17th December 2025
Riffing on the inheritance of guilt for black people whose very skin is their testimony.
1st December 2025
Exploring the feeling of being watched by white families as a black man, while submerged in Olney River
15th October 2025
A new poem by the T.S.Eliot Prize-winning poet Roger Robinson in praise of the black nod of recognition of black lives
27th August 2025
'A master of the slow fade. Of the elegant exit. Of the no'
6th August 2025
A camel ride in the desert, Egyptian mourners and a poetic epiphany
2nd July 2025
The poet on browsing Bookmongers, dining at Clover's, good vibes at Lion Vibes Records, diving into the National Poetry Library, and the minimalist murals of the Church of Notre Dame de France, Soho.
5th June 2025
Roger Robinson's poetic response to Keir Starmer's warning of Britain becoming an "island of strangers"
29th May 2025
Raoul Peck’s startling film about the South African photographer Ernest Cole
16th April 2025
RaMell Ross' film focused on a 1960s US reform school unfolds in oblique snippets.
26th March 2025
How J.H. Lynch's painting became a staple of the West Indian front room
5th March 2025
"A work of quiet genius": Roger Robinson praises the film adaptation of Small Things Like These
20th November 2024
"I had to get to a point in my process from which I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought about it. I had to be able to constantly add risk, interest and innovation to the process without becoming fixated on how the output would be perceived. In fact, I had to take my mind off what the end product would be, never mind how it would be liked. This freed me up to make some of the best and lasting of my artistic work."
Roger Robinson is an award-winning writer and performer from Trinidad now living in Britain.
Moving between individual and social worlds
16th February 2022
Listen now
