Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, and publisher. He initially became interested in language through music and hip-hop and won his first poetry slam at seventeen. He then put poetry aside for a decade, picking up writing again in his late 20s.
Anaxagorou’s poetry collection After the Formalities (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also named a poetry book of the year by the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. His subsequent collection, Heritage Aesthetics (Granta Poetry, 2022), won the Ondaatje Prize, was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award, and was listed as one of New Statesman’s top books of 2022. Anaxagorou is also the author of two other poetry collections, the craft book How To Write It (Merky Books, 2020), and the short story collection The Blink That Killed the Eye (Jacaranda Books, 2014).
Anaxagorou’s poetry has been published in Poetry, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Granta, Ambit, The Adroit Journal, The London Magazine, The Rialto, and elsewhere. His writing has appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4, and Sky Arts. He is the recipient of the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Anaxagorou is the founder and artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and the publisher of Out-Spoken Press. He is the editor-in-chief of Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection, and the founder and curator of WriteBack, a quarterly literary series held at the British Library. In 2019, he was made an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton.
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More Anthony Anaxagorou
Text: Read three poems by Anaxagorou at Granta
Audio: Anaxagorou on the Southbank Centre's podcast, Think Aloud
Text: Read an interview and two poems by Anaxagorou at Napkin Poetry Review