Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus was born in London, Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father, he is the author of To Sweeten Bitter and The Perseverance. In 2019 he became the first ever poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize for best work of literature in any genre.

He is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, The Complete Works 3 and Jerwood
Compton. He is also one of the world's first recipients of an MA in Spoken Word education from Goldsmiths University.

Other accolades include the Ted Hughes award, PBS Winter Choice, A Sunday Times Young Writer of the year award, The Guardian Poetry Book Of The Year 2018, as well as a shortlist for the Griffin Prize and Forward Prize. In 2018 he was awarded The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize (Judged by Ocean Vuong) for his poem 'Sound Machine'. Also in 2019, his poem ‘Jamaican British’ was added to the GCSE syllabus.