Benjamin Zephaniah, poet of social justice issues, dies at 65

Benjamin Zephaniah, an author, professor and poet whose work, imbued with strong social messages, helped a generation of British poets find their voices, died on Thursday. He was 65.

The cause was a brain tumor, which he learned he had eight weeks ago, his family said in a statement. It did not say where he died.

During a career spanning four decades, Mr. Zephaniah was the author of at least thirty books for adults, but also for teenagers and children. He often wrote about racism and environmental issues; he was widely regarded as one of the first poets to address the climate crisis. His work was also taught in classrooms in England, making him a recognizable name there.

“His poems were a plea for social justice,” says Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, a British arts organization. She described them as gentle and humorous at the same time.

In one such poem: “Talking turkeys”, published in 1994, Mr. Zephaniah speaks about kindness to animals (he became vegan at the age of 13) with humor and rhythm:

Be nice to your turkeys this Christmas

Because the turkeys just want to have fun

Turkeys are cool, turkeys are bad

And every turkey has a mother.

He recorded multiple albums of music and poetry, performed in venues of all sizes, and had a recurring role as the character Jeremiah Jesus on the hit show “Peaky Blinders,” set in his hometown of Birmingham, from 2013 to 2022. He was also professor of creative writing at Brunel University near London.

Benjamin Zephaniah was born on April 15, 1958 in Birmingham. When he was 22, he moved to London, where a small publisher released his first book, ‘Pen Rhythm’, in 1983.

Mr. Zephaniah wore his hair in long locks and his work incorporated elements of Jamaican music and poetry. He was credited with opening the door for future generations of poets of color to express themselves, Ms. Palmer said.

“He destroyed the ideas of who could be a poet,” she said.

Mr. Zephaniah was also known for making the “British establishment somewhat uncomfortable,” said Nels Abbey, author and co-founder of the Black Writers Guild, an organization that promotes professional and emerging British writers of Black African and Black African Caribbean descent represents.

In 2003, Mr Zephaniah rejected the Order of the British Empire, which is awarded to people for achievements in various fields, as a form of protest against British imperialism. “Hang in there, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen,” he said at the time. “Stop talking about the empire.”

“I get angry when I hear that word ’empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of cruelty,” he says wrote in an essay in The Guardian in 2003.

Mr Zephaniah was open about the racism he encountered in Britain and was known for pointing out injustices when he saw them. In 2014, as patron of the Newham Monitoring Project, a community-based anti-racism organization in London, he created the ‘Stop and Search on Trial’ campaign, which sought government accountability for police methods.

“We want to make sure they do the right thing,” he said said at the time. “We want to get young people to talk about their experiences when they are stopped, to report things and we want to make young people aware of their rights.”

He was one of the most instantly recognizable poets in Britain. “No matter what street he was walking on,” Ms. Palmer said, “people would cross the street to greet him.”

After his death, Raymond Antrobus, a London-based poet, remembered Mr. Zephaniah as “one who never held his peace.”

“He spoke out courageously, with fierce integrity and clarity,” said Mr. Antrobus, who first experienced Mr. Zephaniah’s charisma and stage presence as a young child when he and his father attended an anti-apartheid demonstration in Parliament Square in London during the early 1990s.

“That is such a powerful memory for me,” Mr. Antrobus said, “because it informed and instilled my entire career.”