Showing results by author "Kayo Chingonyi" in All Categories

Kayo Chingonyi's remarkable second collection follows the course of a 'blood condition' as it finds its way to deeply personal grounds. From the banks of the Zambezi river to London and Leeds, these poems speak to how distance and time, nations and history can collapse within a body. With astonishing lyricism and musicality, this is a story of multiple inheritances—of grief and survival, renewal and the painful process of letting go—and a hymn to the people and places that run in our blood.

1993. Shortly after his father’s death, six-year-old Kayo is smuggled out of Zambia onto a plane bound for Newcastle. Soon he learns that his father died from an HIV-related illness, a fate suffered by many Zambians, and later, he becomes a young carer to his mother as the virus takes her, too. 2017. Now a celebrated young poet, Kayo receives a message from a cousin in Zambia he has not heard from in almost 25 years. He realises it is time to go back.

Translating as 'initiation', kumukanda is the name given to the rites a young boy from the Luvale tribe must pass through before he is considered a man. The poems of Kayo Chingonyi's remarkable debut explore this passage: between two worlds, ancestral and contemporary, between the living and the dead, between the gulf of who he is and how he is perceived. Underpinned by a love of music, language and literature, here is a powerful exploration of race, identity and masculinity, celebrating what it means to be British and not British, all at once.

Travel across oceans and discover the vengeful wrath of a river god in Kayo Chingonyi's West African tale. Soar too close to the sun with Inua Ellam's timely story of a young refugee girl. Fly to a mysterious castle inhabited by a cursed prince with Helen Mort's retelling of 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon'. Uncover the truth of #Bluebeard with Joelle Taylor's modernised fairy tale. Look to the constellations with Will Harris' futuristic Greek tragedy, and never, ever answer to your name in Malika Booker's Trinidadian re-creation of the douen.