Benjamin Zephaniah

The sudden death of Benjamin Zephaniah at the age of 65, two months after being diagnosed with a brain tumour, was met with universal regret at the passing of a popular poet and performer, hailed as “the people’s laureate.”

Born in Birmingham, Zephaniah survived a difficult upbringing to become an often outspoken poet and playwright, and occasional actor. Aged 10, he and his mother fled his violent father. He spent much of the next decade and more in approved schools, borstal and prison. During this period, he became a Rastafarian, although he later insisted: “I believe in God without religion.”

Moving to London in 1980, he came to early attention reading his poetry on the short-lived punk and surging alternative comedy scenes. By the middle of the decade he was also writing plays: Playing the Right Tune (1985) and his “dub opera” Job Rocking (1987) were both seen at Riverside Studios.

The following year his radio debut, Hurricane Dub, was featured in the BBC’s inaugural Young Playwrights’ Festival. In 1992, he made a foray into television drama with Dread Poets’ Society. Co-written with David Stafford, it featured Zephaniah himself, alongside Alex Jennings and Alan Cumming as Byron and Shelley respectively.

He also wrote plays for children, novels and a biography of Windrush-era actor and singer Mona Baptiste, alongside more than a dozen collections of poems and seven recordings of his work.

In 2008, he was included in the Times newspaper’s list of the 50 greatest writers of the post-war era. Life & Rhymes, his celebration of spoken-word performances for Sky Arts, won BAFTA’s Lew Grade Award for best entertainment programme in 2021.

A sporadic actor, he attracted admiration as the dreadlocked preacher Jeremiah Jesus in the cult-attracting Peaky Blinders between 2013 and 2022.

An active chairman of the Hackney Empire Preservation Trust, Zephaniah was appointed to a professorship at Brunel University in 2011. As a self-confessed “anarchist”, he regularly engaged with social and political campaigns.

Refusing the offer of an OBE in 2003, he said: “That word ‘empire’ reminds me… of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised… I am profoundly anti-empire.”

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah was born on April 15, 1958, and died on December 7, 2023. He is survived by his second wife, Qian.