John Agard has been broadening the canvas of British poetry for the past 40 years with his mischievous, satirical fables. In Clever Backbone , the Guyanese-born word magician plays havoc with biology and makes a monkey out of Darwinian evolution - on the occasion of the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species . His Alternative Anthem: Selected Poems (with DVD) is published at the same time.