Poet, dramatist, academic, curator, historian and musician in his adopted city of Bristol, Edson Burton won the WGGB /Society of Authors 2025 Tinniswood Award for best audio-drama script of the year with Man Friday, while Witness marks only his second poetry collection, sixteen years after his first, Seasoned, was published.

The poems in Witness sizzle with political and cultural energy, as in ‘Mother Tongue,’ ‘Grenfell,’ ‘The Hollow Boys,’ which assert Edson’s incisive critique, informed by his specialist expertise; expressing vigorous, rousing protest; demanding social justice. ‘Library of Witness’ is a mighty, 8-part commission exploring our historical, ecological and inter-cultural relationship with trees. The reader finds immense compassion, too, in a voice that is generous, humane, tender, in ‘Lickle Bird Mabel,’ ‘Liberty Had a Baby’ and others. A set of love poems – intimate, sensual, erotic – engages us with a more personal, somatic language: the beloved is cherished and respected but the poet’s self-awareness places the male gaze and response under scrutiny, too.

On radio, Edson’s credits also include the supernatural trilogy Deacon starring Don Warrington, while his theatre writing spans a range of theatre-based, promenade and site-specific work, such as The Ithaca Axis (2013) Curried Goat & Fish Fingers (with Miles Chambers, 2016), the Frederick Douglass dramatization An Abolitionist Returns (2018) The Edge 2018, and the ribald Anansi & the Grand Prize (2019). He recently wrote for the Welsh National Opera’s Migrations and is currently working on a script with award-winning Black opera company Pegasus. His on-screen history-specialist appearances include the Hairy Bikers series Pubs that Made Britain (2015), Books that Made Britain: Bristol Sin City (2016), Lost Civilizations Series 1: The Remains of Slavery (2017), Antiques Road Show (2018), Britain’s Most Historic Towns: Georgian Bristol (2019) and African Queens (2023) in addition to regularly appearing on local news and radio. His academic specialisms include Afro-futurism, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Race & Representation.

Locally, Edson is the driving force behind many cultural initiatives at the Trinity Centre, co-author of What’s Your Trinity Story, a member of Bristol’s History Commission, the film programming collective Come the Revolution, and the Queer People of Colour collective, Kiki Bristol. As if that’s not enough, Edson is vocalist in the band The Private Joys, father of two young adults, uncle to a cat and a lover of Easton, Bristol, where he resides.