Patience AgbabiFRSL is a Britishpoet and performer who gives particular emphasis to the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of strong formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as both "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature prominently in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Agbabi began performing on the London club circuit in 1995. She has cited among her influences Janis Joplin, Carol Ann Duffy, Chaucer, and various aspects of contemporary music and culture. Agbabi's childhood love of cake is apparent in her poem "Eat Me". The poems in her first book R.A.W., published in 1995, "owe much to the rhythms, verbal and associational genius of rap". Her next collection was Transformatrix, a commentary on contemporary Britain that draws inspiration from popular music forms. In 2008 Agbabi published Bloodshot Monochrome, a collection that, as described by one reviewer, highlights social and political issues, captures and considers moments in time through long-dead authors, and offers readers a diverse sampling of the author's views of life in a variety of places". Carol Rumens has said: "Agbabi characteristically makes poetry an opportunity for conversation with the past, not swamping it but setting new lexical terms." As Canterbury Laureate from July 2009 to December 2010, Agbabi received an Arts Council grant to write a full-length poetry collection based on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and her next book, 2014's Telling Tales, mines the Middle-English masterwork to offer a 21st-century take on the characters, its poetry and its performance elements. The book met with praise from poets including Simon Armitage, who described it as "the liveliest versions of Chaucer you're likely to read." Agbabi continues to tour Telling Tales as a performance-poetry production shown at literature festivals, arts spaces and libraries across the UK. She has performed extensively and collaborated with other writers. Her work has also been influenced by rap rhythms and wordplay. She was a member of Atomic Lip, which has been described as "poetry's first pop group". They worked together from 1995 to 1998 and their last tour, Quadrophonix merged live and video performance. In 1996 she worked on a performance piece called FOR WOMEN, with Adeola Agbebiyi and Dorothea Smartt, first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and which toured from 1995 to 1998. As well as performing in Britain, Agbabi has undertaken British Council reading tours of Namibia, the Czech Republic, Zimbabwe, Germany and Switzerland. She took part in Modern Love, a spoken-word tour produced by Renaissance One, which explored love and modern relationships, touring the UK and Switzerland. Her poetry has been featured on television and radio, including the Channel 4 series Litpop in 1998 and on the children's programme Blue Peter in 1999. She has also been a contributor to several anthologies, among them Jubilee Lines, which marked Queen Elizabeth II's 60th anniversary on the throne, and Refugee Tales, a collection of stories based on accounts by Gatwick airport detainees. She has taught and run workshops and also been poet-in-residence at various places, ranging from Oxford Brookes University and Eton College to a London tattoo and piercing studio. In 2018 she was Writer In Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
