Malika Booker (born 1970)"Malika Booker"
at Forward Arts Foundatione. is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist, who is considered "a pioneer of the present

spoken word Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an oral tradition, ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetic ...

movement" in the UK. Her writing spans different genres of storytelling, including poetry, theatre, monologue, installation and education, and her work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies. Organizations for which she has worked include

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council o ...

, the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of Burroughs Wellcome, one of the predec ...

, National Theatre,

Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratf ...

, Arvon, and

Hampton Court Palace Hampton Court Palace is a Listed building, Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. Opened to the public, the palace is managed by Historic Royal ...

Biography

Malika Booker was born in London, UK, to Guyanese and Grenadian parents. She grew up in Guyana and returned to the UK aged 13, with her parents. Booker began writing and performing poetry while studying anthropology at

Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, formerly Goldsmiths College, University of London, is a constituent research university of the University of London. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by ...

. She founded the poetry collective Malika's Kitchen, which also included Nick Makoha. She took part in The Complete Works mentoring programme. Her first collection of poetry, ''Pepper Seed'', was published by

Peepal Tree Press Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said: "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading pu ...

in 2013 and was shortlisted for the

Seamus Heaney Centre The Seamus Heaney Centre is located at Queen's University Belfast, and named after the late Seamus Heaney, recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Heaney graduated from Queens in 1961 with a First Class Honours in English language and l ...

prize for best first full collection published in the UK and Ireland. She was the inaugural Poet In Residence at the

. Booker's poem "Nine Nights", first published in ''

The Poetry Review ''The Poetry Review'' is the magazine of The Poetry Society, edited by the poet Wayne Holloway-Smith. Founded in 1912, shortly after the establishment of the Society, previous editors have included poets Muriel Spark, Adrian Henri, Andrew Motio ...

'' in autumn 2016, was shortlisted for Best Single Poem in the 2017

Forward Prize The Forward Prizes for Poetry are major British awards for poetry, presented annually at a public ceremony in London. They were founded in 1992 by William Sieghart with the aim of celebrating excellence in poetry and increasing its audience. The ...

. She has written for radio and for the stage, and her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including ''Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women’s Poetry'' (1998), ''The India International Journal'' (2005), ''Ten New Poets'' (2010), ''Out of Bounds, Black & Asian Poets'' (2012), and '' New Daughters of Africa'' (2019).

Awards

In 2019, Booker received a

Cholmondeley Award The Cholmondeley Awards ( ) are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has bee ...

for her outstanding contribution to poetry. In 2020, Booker won the

for "Best Single Poem – Written" for "The Little Miracles", published in Magma. In 2023 she won that prize for that category again, which made her the first woman to win that prize for that category twice. Her 2023 win was for a poem called “Libation”, which the ''

Poetry Review ''The Poetry Review'' is the magazine of The Poetry Society, edited by the poet Wayne Holloway-Smith. Founded in 1912, shortly after the establishment of the Society, previous editors have included poets Muriel Spark, Adrian Henri, Andrew Mo ...

'' first published. She was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the ...

in 2022.

Selected works

* 1998: ''Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry.'' Ed. Karen McCarthy (

The Women's Press The Women's Press was a feminist publishing company established in London in 1977. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, The Women's Press was a highly visible presence, publishing feminist literature. Founding In 1977, Stephanie Dowrick cofo ...

) * 2000: ''IC3: The Penguin Anthology of New Black Writing.'' Eds

Courttia Newland Courttia Newland (born 25 August 1973) is a British writer of Jamaicans, Jamaican and Barbados, Barbadian heritage. Background Born in 1973 in west London, to parents of Caribbean heritage, Newland grew up in Shepherd's Bush, where he became a ...

and Kadija Sesay (Penguin) * 2004: ''KIN: Commemorative Tour Anthology'' ( Renaissance One) * 2004: ''The Way We See It, The Way It Is'' (Lynk Reach) * 2007: ''Breadfruit'' (

flipped eye publishing Founded in 2001 by Nii Ayikwei Parkes and J. A. Parkes, flipped eye publishing is a company that publishes original poetry and prose on a not-for-profit model. The not-for-profit approach has allowed flipped eye to focus on new writers with poten ...

). * 2010: ''Ten New Poets'' (Bloodaxe) * 2012: ''Hidden Gems Volume Two: Contemporary Black British Plays''. Ed. Deirdre Osborne (Oberon Books). * 2013: ''Pepper Seed'' (Peepal Tree Press) * 2017: '' Penguin Modern Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body'' by Malika Booker,

Sharon Olds Sharon Olds (born November 19, 1942) is an American poet. She won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Warsan Shire Warsan Shire (born 1 August 1988) is a British writer, poet, editor, and teacher who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Early life and career Born on 1 August 1 ...

(Penguin). * 2019: '' New Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of writing by women of African descent''. Ed.

Margaret Busby Margaret Yvonne Busby, , Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's then youngest publisher as well as the first black female book p ...

(London:

Myriad Editions Myriad Editions is an independent UK publishing house based in Brighton and Hove, Sussex, specialising in topical atlases, graphic non-fiction and original fiction, whose output also encompasses graphic novels that span a variety of genres, in ...

References

External links

Official website

"Forward Arts Foundation in conversation with Malika Booker"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Booker, Malika 21st-century British poets Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London Black British women writers Black British writers 21st-century British women writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature English people of Guyanese descent English people of Grenadian descent British spoken word artists 1970 births Living people