Anthony Joseph is an award winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of four poetry collections and three novels. 

His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award, and long listed for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His most recent fiction publication is the experimental novel The Frequency of Magic which received an Arts Council of England touring award. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. In 2020 a Polish translation of his afrofuturist novel The African Origins of UFOs was published, followed by a Spanish edition of Kitch. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamblyn Foundation Composers Award. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College, and has taught at Birkbeck College, Goldsmiths and at the University of Liverpool where he served as the Colm Tóibín Fellow in Creative Writing. 

His most recent poetry collection, Sonnets for Albert was published by Bloomsbury in June 2022 and shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for best collection, and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

Research interests and PhD supervision

Alongside his ongoing research interests in liminality theory and its applicability to the Caribbean experience in the UK, Joseph's research and scholarship revolves around experimental black British and Caribbean postcolonial poetry, life writing and fiction. He also works within music, exploring the interstices between music and poetics.

Selected publications

2022 - Sonnets for Albert, Bloomsbury Publishing

2019 - The Frequency of Magic, Peepal Tree Press

2018 - Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon, Peepal Tree Press

2011 - Rubber Orchestras, Salt Publishing

2008 - Bird Head Son, Salt Publishing

2006 - The African Origins of UFOs, Salt Publishing

Teaching

Poetry, fiction, literary theory

Expertise and public engagement 

In 2021 Joseph curated the Manchester Poetry Library's Poetry on Vinyl Collection. In 2018 he curated Windrush: A Celebration for the EFG London Jazz Festival. The series of five events, reconsidered and celebrated the literary and musical contributions of the Windrush generation.

He has in the past, worked as a touring writer with the British Council, serving as the inaugural British Council poet in residence at California State University. He serves as a panelist at numerous international conferences.