Roger Robinson was born in Hackney, London, to Trinidadian parents and moved to Trinidad at the age of four. He returned to England at nineteen in the 1980s, first living with his grandmother in Ilford, Essex, before settling in Brixton. This double crossing — London-born, Trinidad-raised, London-returned — is the biographical engine of his work. He describes himself as "a British resident with a Trini sensibility," and that layered belonging is a structural fact he writes from.
Robinson began his career in spoken-word performance in London in the early 1990s, and his practice has never separated poetry from music. He performed with bands including Techno Animal, The Bug, and Attica Blues, and became lead vocalist for King Midas Sound, whose debut album *Waiting for You* was released on Hyperdub Records and listed among the top 50 releases of 2009 by *The Wire*. His solo spoken-folk album *illclectica* was named one of the top 10 electronic albums of its year by *Mojo*. The 2015 release *Dis Side Ah Town* was received as a work in direct conversation with the traditions of dub and roots reggae. This sustained life in music and performance shaped a poetic voice that is metrically alive to the ear, attentive to breath and timing in ways that page-trained poets rarely achieve.
“His first collection, *Suitcase*, appeared in 2005 from Flipped Eye Publishing.”
*Suckle* followed in 2009 and won the People's Book Prize in 2010. *The Butterfly Hotel* (2013, Peepal Tree Press) was shortlisted for the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, establishing Robinson within a transatlantic conversation about Caribbean literary identity that runs from London to Port of Spain. His fourth collection, *A Portable Paradise* (2019, Peepal Tree Press), brought the widest recognition: it won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2019, the highest-value award in UK poetry, making Robinson the second writer of Caribbean heritage to receive it, following Derek Walcott in 2010. His win was also noted as a significant moment for independent publishers. *A Portable Paradise* went on to win the Ondaatje Prize in May 2020.
Beyond his own writing, Robinson has been a persistent builder of poetic community. He served as programme co-ordinator of Apples and Snakes until 2000 and co-founded Malika's Poetry Kitchen alongside Malika Booker and Jacob Sam-La Rose, a collective that has mentored a generation of British poets of colour. His workshop practice contributed to work shortlisted for the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums and Galleries. He was selected by arts organisation Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced Black British writing over the past 50 years. In 2020 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Commissions have taken him to the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the National Trust, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate, and LIFT, and his one-man spoken-word shows — including *The Shadow Boxer*, *Letter from My Father's Brother*, and *Prohibition* — all premiered at the British Festival of Visual Theatre at Battersea Arts Centre.