Antrobus for Deaf Poetry Slam
British-Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus headlines today’s staging of the Deaf Poetry Slam, part of the Kingston Book Fair organised by the Book Industry Association of Jamaica (BIAJ) at Hope Gardens in St Andrew.
Antrobus is an award-winning poet and one of the first recipients of a Master of Arts in Spoken Word Education from Goldsmiths University. Over the years, he has worked with the British Council as part of the Storymoja Festival in Nairobi, Kenya, and he was also a featured writer for the International Literature Showcase in the UK. In 2017, he was awarded one of three Jerwood Compton poetry fellowships and is also a Complete Works fellow. He has also won numerous slams including the Farrago International Slam in 2010, The Canterbury Slam 2013 and was joint winner at the Open Calabash Slam in 2016. His pamphlet, To Sweeten Bitter was published last year and his forthcoming debut, The Perseverance is set to be released by Penned In The Margins in October.
“Having worked with Raymond internationally, the British Council is very pleased to host him in Jamaica. The UK is one of the leaders in disabled access to the arts and equality, diversity and Inclusion is an important cultural relations theme for us. The Kingston Book Festival is playing a critical role in helping to showcase the skills of artists from the disabled community and we hope that this can catalyse long-term change,” shared the British Council’s arts manager Andrea Chung-Dempster.
The British Council’s long-term involvement in disability and arts is based on a commitment to equality. The moral, social, and political imperative argues that disabled people should have the same rights to the arts, either as audiences or as artists, as do non-disabled people.
The Kingston Book Festival includes events for children, teachers, librarians, writers, publishers, booksellers, literary tourists, socially aware corporations and non-profit organisations.