'If Mikhail Bulgakov and Ishmael Reed had a godson in Trinidad raised on Rapso and John Coltrane solos then what you'd get is Anthony Joseph' – Roger Robinson

Delighted to welcome back Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician, Anthony Joseph, reading from his new poetry collection, Haunting The Black Air, accompanied by an improvising trio.

Anthony Joseph's 2022 collection Sonnets for Albert won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2022 and the OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Poetry. His latest collection is Haunting the Black Air (Bloomsbury Poetry, 2026). He has released ten critically acclaimed albums, most recently the two part Afrofuturist project, Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back & The Ark. He is a lecturer at Kings' College, London.

Haunting the Black Air is a work of radical experimentation, in the ethos of swing as praxis the reading will be accompanied by a trio of improvising musicians. 

'Joseph's follow-up to the T. S. Eliot prize-winning Sonnets for Albert sees his poetic approach become more radical. He pays homage to avant garde writers such as Will Alexander and Nathaniel Mackey . . . Joseph's unabashed lyricism shines through, finding beauty on dancefloors, city streets and in Trinidadian landscapes' – Guardian, Poetry Books of the Month

'Anthony Joseph writes as if language itself were a drumhead stretched tight across history, each line struck with precision, improvisation and risk ... This is a work of rare formal daring and spiritual depth - a book of friendship that enlarges what poetry can do, how it can sound and how it can carry the weight of the world while still singing' – Peter Gizzi, author of Fierce Elegy