Stephen Lawrence poem by Benjamin Zephaniah donated to British Library

Manuscript of What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us, which was written to help drive search for the teenager’s racist killers, will be displayed in the library’s galleries

Benjamin Zephaniah has donated a handwritten version of his poem What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us, in which he writes of how “we know who the killers are”, to the British Library.

The poem about Lawrence’s murder, which Zephaniah wrote in 1999, will be displayed in the Treasures of the British Library gallery from Tuesday, alongside work from writers including Angela Carter, whose manuscript of The Passion of New Eve features in the gallery. A spokesperson for the library said that “while the library of course regularly receives donations and acquires valuable items, it is rare for new items to be displayed in the public gallery”. Zephaniah’s poem is the first new item to be displayed in the gallery’s contemporary collections since the acquisition of Kenneth Williams’s diaries in 2015.

Related: What Stephen Lawrence has taught us