Agbabi began performing on the London club circuit in 1995 as a member of the performance group Atomic Lip, which was once described as "poetry's first pop group." Their final tour occurred in 1998, titled "Quadrophonix," which mixed live and video performance in each show. In 1996, she worked on a performance piece called FO(U)R WOMEN, with Adeola Agbebiyi and Dorothea Smartt, first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and touring from 1995 to 1998.[7][8] She has cited among her influences Janis Joplin, Carol Ann Duffy, Chaucer, and various aspects of contemporary music and culture. Agbabi's childhood love of cake is apparent in her poem "Eat Me".
The poems in her first book R.A.W., published in 1995, focus on her experiences regarding Thatcherism, urban life, and racial and sexual politics.[8] The style of these poems "owe much to the rhythms, verbal and associational genius of rap".[9] Her next collection was Transformatrix (2000), a commentary on contemporary Britain that draws inspiration from popular music forms. "Transformatix" also contains Agbabi's first published adaptation of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, reimagining the Wife of Bath as the Nigerian "Mrs. Alice Ebi Bafa".[10] In 2008, Agbabi published Bloodshot Monochrome, a collection that, as described by one reviewer, highlights social and political issues, captures and considers moments in time through long-dead authors, and offers readers a diverse sampling of the author's views of life in a variety of places."[11] Carol Rumens has said: "Agbabi characteristically makes poetry an opportunity for conversation with the past, not swamping it but setting new lexical terms."[12]
As Canterbury Laureate from July 2009 to December 2010, Agbabi received an Arts Council grant to write a full-length poetry collection based on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales,[13]. The final product was published in 2014 as Telling Tales, which retold each tale in the Middle-English work to offer a 21st-century take on the characters, its poetry and its performance elements.[14] The reinterpretation used her critically acclaimed, lyrical poetic style to newly define British literary traditions. The book met with praise from poets including Simon Armitage, who described it as "the liveliest versions of Chaucer you're likely to read."[15] Agbabi continues to tour Telling Tales as a performance-poetry production shown at literature festivals, arts spaces and libraries across the UK. She performed tales such as "The Wife of Bafa" or "Tit for Tat (Reeves's tale)".
As well as performing in Britain, Agbabi undertook British Council reading tours of Namibia, the Czech Republic, Zimbabwe, Germany and Switzerland. She took part in Modern Love, a spoken-word tour produced by Renaissance One, which explored love and modern relationships, touring the UK and Switzerland.
Her poetry has featured on television and radio, including the Channel 4 series Litpop in 1998 and on the children's programme Blue Peter in 1999. She has also been a contributor to several anthologies, among them Jubilee Lines (2012), edited by Carol Ann Duffy, which marked Queen Elizabeth II's 60th anniversary on the throne,[16] and Refugee Tales (2016), a collection of stories based on accounts by Gatwick airport detainees.[17][18]
She has taught and run workshops and also been poet-in-residence at various places, ranging from Oxford Brookes University and Eton College to a London tattoo and piercing studio.[19]
In 2018, she was writer in residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.[20]
