Biography
John Agard was born in British Guiana (now Guyana), and grew up in Georgetown. He loved to listen to cricket commentary on the radio and began making up his own, which led to a love of language. He went on to study English, French and Latin at A-Level, writing his first published poetry when he was in the sixth form, and left school in 1967. He taught the languages he had studied and worked in a local library. He was also a sub-editor and feature writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle, publishing two books while he was still in Guyana.
His father (Ted) settled in London and in 1977 Agard moved to Britain with his partner Grace Nichols, settling in Ironbridge, Shropshire. He worked for the Commonwealth Institute and the BBC in London.
His awards included the 1997 Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry, the Cholmondeley Award in 2004 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012. In November 2021 he became the first poet to be awarded BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Agard was poet-in-residence at the National Maritime Museum in 2008. His poems "Half Caste" and "Checking Out Me History" have been featured in the Edexcel and AQA English GCSE anthologies respectively, meaning that many students (aged 13–16) have studied his work for their GCSE English qualifications. In the AQA English Literature Paper 2 which took place on 19 May 2026, students studying the Power & Conflict poetry anthology were asked to compare how Agard's poem 'Checking Out Me History' and 1 other poem from the cluster present strong emotions for 30 marks.
Archival literary records consisting of "letters and proofs relating to the published poetry works of John Agard" are held at Newcastle University Special Collections, in the Bloodaxe Books Archive.
Agard lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with his partner, the Guyanese poet Grace Nichols.
