Skip to content

Due to staff leave and the Easter Bank Holiday weekend there may be some delay to orders and email responses until Tues 2nd April. Thank you for your patience!

Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi

Regular price £10.00

Unit price per 

only -11 left in stock

The N Word

You sly devil.

Lounging in a Pinter script or pitched from a transit vans rolled-down window; my shadow on this un-lit road, though you've been smuggled from polite conversation.

A writer of power and precision, as striking on the page as he is on the stage, this is Kayo Chingonyi s much-anticipated first collection. In poems that are at once assured and incisive, he eloquently confronts issues of race, self-portraiture and self-perception to shine a light on all that is dark, hidden, 'smuggled from polite conversation . Here too are poems on exile, migration, masculinity and hip-hop, all in Kayo's inimitable passion and style. This unmissable debut promises to speak about race in the UK as eloquently and with the same urgency and force as Claudia Rankine s CITIZEN did in the US.

Kayo Chingonyi was born in Zambia in 1987, and moved to the UK at the age of six. He is the author of two pamphlets, Some Bright Elegance (Salt, 2012) and The Colour of James Brown's Scream (Akashic, 2016). As well as being widely published in journals and anthologies, Kayo has delivered lectures and readings from his work at venues and events around the world, and most recently on Alan Yentob's documentary on TS Eliot on BBC Radio 4. He represented Zambia at Poetry Parnassus (a festival of world poets staged by the Southbank Centre as part of the Cultural Olympiad) and was awarded a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize as well as residencies from Kingston University, Cove Park, and Royal Holloway University of London in partnership with Counterpoints Arts. He was Associate Poet at the Institute off Contemporary Arts (ICA) from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2016. He lives in Essex.

MEMBERS ENJOY 25% OFF ALL POETRY BOOKS

JOIN NOW

Join the Poetry Book Society for 25% off all books

Close (esc)

Popup

Use this popup to embed a mailing list sign up form. Alternatively use it as a simple call to action with a link to a product or a page.

Age verification

By clicking enter you are verifying that you are old enough to consume alcohol.

Search

Your cart is currently empty.
Shop now