Already well-known on the UK performance circuit, Jacob Sam-La Rose has also spent many years working with young people in schools and communities, especially around London. Breaking Silence is his first book-length collection of poetry – a collection that sits on the threshold between the personal and the profound, with eyes on race and dual heritage; masculinity and manhood; definitions and senses of self.

“Passionate about poetry and its power to change people’s lives, he’s a lesson to us all. He’s also a damn fine writer.”
Patrick Neate

“Poetry that is… fresh, vivid and masterly in its evocation of contemporary Britain.”
Choman Hardi and Martyn Crucefix, PBS Bulletin (on Communion)

Jacob Sam-La Rose was born in London in 1976. He was managing director of a web development studio before becoming a freelance writer and editor. He is the Artistic Director of the London Teenage Poetry SLAM, and an editor for Flipped Eye Press. His work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, 2010), Poems For Love (Penguin, 2010), Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree, 2010) and Michael Rosen’s A-Z: The Best Children’s Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah (Puffin, 2009). His pamphlet Communion was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2006.