Peaky Blinders star Benjamin Zephaniah talks about gigs in Shrewsbury and Birmingham

The performance poet who stars in Peaky Blinders and became friends with Nelson Mandela was thrilled to note gigs in Birmingham and Shrewsbury.

Birmingham was, of course, the city in which he was born and the place that honed both his political views and his determination to make something of his life. And Shrewsbury was a crossroads town – a place near to the North Shropshire borstal that provided him with a crossroads moment. It led to him reshaping his life and becoming one of Britain’s best loved and most respected poets.

Benjamin – or, to give him his rather grand title, Professor Benjamin Zephaniah, will hit the road in spring, playing Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn on June 14 and Birmingham’s Town Hall on June 15.

The shows will follow the release of his new autobiography, The Life And Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in May.

He is looking forward to being back on the road and to see friendly faces from the West Midlands.

“Those places will always be important to me,” he says. “I live in a different part of the country now but I’m regularly back in Birmingham. Peaky Blinders is centred on the city and my mother still lives there too.

“And Shrewsbury brings back very fond memories. I’ve played Theatre Severn before and always been given a very warm welcome. So I’m looking forward to coming back.”

Benjamin’s new book and tour chart our social history, as well as his own individual story.

He loved growing up in Handsworth, which he called the Jamaican capital of Europe. He learned to rhyme at his mother’s church but although his work become popular within the African-Caribbean and Asian community he thought the town was too small.

He was not satisfied preaching about the sufferings of black people to black people, so he sought a wider mainstream audience. At the age of 22 he headed south to London where his first book Pen Rhythm was published by Page One Books. The book sold well, going into three editions but it was in performance that the Dub (Reggae) Poet would cause a revolution, a revolution that injected new life into the British poetry scene and attracted the interest of many mainstream publishers, many of whom had sent refusal letters to him only 12 months earlier.

In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets protesting about unemployment, homelessness and the National Front, Benjamin’s poetry could be heard at demonstrations, outside police stations and on the dance floor.

His mission was to take poetry everywhere, and to popularise it by reaching people who didn’t read books. His poetry was political, musical, radical and relevant.

By the early 1990s, Benjamin had performed on every continent in the world, a feat he achieved in only one year, and he hasn’t stopped performing and touring since. Nelson Mandela, after hearing Benjamin’s tribute to him while he was in prison, requested an introduction to the poet that grew into a lifelong relationship, inspiring Benjamin’s work with children in South Africa.

Benjamin would also go on to be the first artist to record with The Wailers after the death of Bob Marley in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela. His story is a celebration of a truly extraordinary life story which remarks upon the power of poetry and the importance of pushing boundaries with the arts.

Remarkably, the genesis of Benjamin’s new book can be traced directly back to the last time he played in Shrewsbury. There, he met a writer friend who encouraged him to start mapping out the details of his life. The process took more years than Benjamin imagined, but he’s delighted to have completed his autobiography and is looking forward to sharing his stories at local theatres.

He says: “The work is an autobiography and a social history. They say you mellow with age, but, if anything, I’m angrier than I’ve ever been. There is still injustice, there is still hate, there is still intolerance. The Life and Rhymes is about the race riots, the struggle to free Mandela, my career as writer and poet, and much more. It charts my course through a changing political and cultural landscape.”

Now, nearly 40 years after beginning his career as a poet, it’s time to hit the road and share his stories. “I hope people enjoy them,” he says humbly. They will, Benjamin, they really will.

l Tickets are available from www.theatresevern.co.uk and www.thsh.co.uk