Best books… Roger Robinson

The writer and educator chooses his six favourite books. His 2019 collection of poems, A Portable Paradise (Peepal Tree Press £9.99) won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2020

Afropean

by Johny Pitts, 2019 (Penguin £10.99). This winner of the Jhalak Prize is part travelogue, part memoir, part history. Pitts documents Black Europe in a crucial period of world politics. Extremely well written and argued, it encouraged me to assess my identity in relation to Europe.

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

by

Hanif Abdurraqib, 2019 (Melville House £8.99). This book is amazing, even if you’ve never heard of the seminal hiphop band A Tribe Called Quest. What I liked about it was how important a band’s songs, progress and style could be to their fans’ growth, identity and confidence.

Written with the emotional grace of poetry, it went on to become a bestseller.

Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross, 2020 (Sphere £14.99). What happens when you combine great literature with crime writing? You get this, the second in a trilogy about Det. Michael “Digger” Digson. The story and the quality of the writing are amazing.

While I Yet Live

by Gboyega Odubanjo, 2019 (Bad Betty Press £6). I have seen Odubanjo read his poems at a lively poetry night called Pen-Ting. In this pamphlet, we see a very talented writer who effortlessly combines the intricacies of Black British life with interesting approaches to classic form.

My Darling from the Lions

by Rachel Long, 2020 (Picador £tbc). I got hold of an advance copy of this poetry book, and it is a delight. It takes melancholic, surprising turns every couple of pages, with poems centred around combating body shame, sex and faith. Look out for it in July.

Girl, Woman, Other

by Bernardine Evaristo, 2019 (Penguin £8.99). The jointBooker Prize-winning novel tells an epic intergenerational story of 12 black women whose lives overlap as friends, families and lovers. A must.