Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi FRSL is a dynamic poet, performer, workshop facilitator and Fellow in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. She has performed all over the world and taught Creative Writing in a broad range of settings for over 20 years, from primary to PhD. Highlights include setting a world record in 2000 where she recited her poem ‘Word’ in synch with 3,001 primary school pupils; and participating in Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 which led to a project with Year 8 pupils in conjunction with the National Gallery. Her poem ‘Eat Me’ is studied on the Edexcel A-level curriculum.
Canterbury Laureate from 2009 to 2010, she received a Grant for the Arts to write a contemporary version of The Canterbury Tales. This fourth poetry collection, Telling Tales, was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and Wales Book of the Year 2015. She was writer-in-residence at Brontë Parsonage in 2018 to mark Emily Brontë’s bicentenary. Her debut, middle-grade novel, The Infinite, was published by Canongate in 2020. Her most recent publication was The Past Master (Book 4 of The Leap Cycle series) in February 2024.