John Agard was born in 1949 in Guyana. His love of language began in school where his favourite subjects were English, French and Latin. A Roman Catholic altar boy, he was deeply affected by the call-and-response style of Latin masses. He was also intrigued by the poetry used to describe that most popular of West Indian sports, cricket. He wrote his first poetry at the age of sixteen.

After a spell teaching he worked for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle newspaper as sub-editor and feature writer before moving to England in 1977, where he became a touring lecturer for the Commonwealth Institute, travelling to over 2000 schools throughout the UK to promote a better understanding of Caribbean culture. In 1993 he was appointed the first Writer in Residence at the South Bank Centre, London, and later became Poet in Residence at the BBC in London. He also played a key role in the ‘Windrush’ season of programmes in 1998. He won the Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry in 1997 and has travelled extensively throughout the world performing his poetry.

Agard often writes sequences and books constructed around a single theme. His first book Man to Pan (1982) celebrated the steel drums of calypso. In “Limbo Dancer” in Dark Glasses (1983), limbo, having originated on the slave ships, is seen as iconic of Caribbean culture. Since his move to England his poetry has become less elemental, more satirical and pointed. Typical is ‘Listen Mr Oxford Don’ from Mangoes and Bullets (1985):

"I didn't graduate
I immigrate."

John Agard has helped to make Caribbean culture accessible to a wide audience. One way in which he has done this has been to write for children. His many books, often illustrated, are as philosophical as his adult books but entirely accessible to children. His recent book, Come Back to Me My Boomerang (2001) has a dialogue between a circle and a square on the respective virtues of rectangularity and circularity. In Get Back, Pimple (1996) he has a poem in which the animals dream of exploiting humans in the way that humans exploit them.

His latest publications are We Brits (Bloodaxe 2006) and The Young Inferno 2008 (Frances Lincoln Children's Books).