Anthony Joseph

Anthony Joseph is a British/Trinidadian poet, novelist, musician and academic.

Joseph was born in Trinidad and raised by his grandparents. He began writing as a young child and cites his main influences as calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the rhythms of Caribbean speech. Joseph has lived in the UK since 1989.

In September 2004 he was chosen by Renaissance One and the Arts Council England as one of 50 Black and Asian writers who have made major contributions to contemporary British literature, appearing in the historic "A Great Day in London" photograph and performing at the event at the British Library. In April 2005, he served as the British Council's first poet-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles.

Joseph holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has taught at London Metropolitan University, University of Surrey Roehampton, South Thames College,Birkbeck College and other institutions.

Joseph is the author of the poetry collections Desafinado (1994), Teragaton (1997), Bird Head Son (2009) and "Rubber Orchestras" (2011). His debut novel, The African Origins of UFOs, was published by Salt Publishing in November 2006. Described as an "afro-psychedelic-noir, a poetic work of metafiction, mythology and afro-futurism", the book was endorsed by Kamau Brathwaite, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Lauri Ramey, who hailed it in her introduction as "a future fiction classic". Reviewing the book, Ali Alizadeh called Joseph "both a faithful heir and an agnostic rebel; a Black poet haunted by Africa's past as well as a bilingual post-modernist amused by the possibilities of the future. Contemporary literature doesn't come a lot more sophisticated and intriguing than this." Joseph subsequently received an Arts Council award to conduct a reading tour of the UK in support of the book. In 2007, the tour continued to Europe with a ten-city tour of Germany and readings in the US.

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