Translated by: Bartosz Wójcik

Roger Robinson

excerpt from the recommendation:

Roger Robinson draws from the rich cultural heritage of the Caribbean, the challenging history of colonial subjugation, his poignant personal biography, the language of his ancestors (Trinidadian English), and the everyday British English vernacular. His work expands the meaning of contemporary poetry and community, while serving as a poetic chronicle of events significant to Black Britons.

 

 

 

 

Roger Robinson

ROGER ROBINSON (b. 1967) is a writer and musician born in London and raised in Trinidad. He is the co-founder of King Midas Sound, recording and touring internationally with the band as singer and lyricist. He has also recorded solo albums exploring minimalist electronica and dub (Jahtari Records). His poetry collection The Butterfly Hotel (2013) was shortlisted for the 2014 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His book A Portable Paradise (2019) won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize in January 2020 and the Ondaatje Prize in May 2020. Robinson is also the co-author (with photographer and writer Johny Pitts) of Home is Not a Place (2022) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Bartosz Wójcik

BARTOSZ WÓJCIK is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS), an organiser of cultural events, and member of the Polish Literary Translators Association. His texts have been published in Autoportret, Dialog, Dwutygodnik, Przekrój, and Wizje. Together with Jolanta Prochowicz, he edited the anthology Poetki na czasy zarazy (Women Poets for Times of Plague, WBPiCAK 2021). Alongside Olga Godlewska, he co-hosted the Podkast Zamorski (2022–2024), a series of discussions on literature from the Global South with a focus on the Caribbean and South America. He co-edited the anthology Dymy. Antologia tekstów slamerskich (Smokes: An Anthology of Slam Poetry, Dosłowne 2024) with Dagmara Świerkowska-Kobus and is a regular contributor to the quarterly Czas Literatury.