Kumukanda, Paperback

*Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 2018*
*Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award 2018*
*Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Prize 2017*
*Shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Poetry Collection Prize 2018*
*Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2018*
*Shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018*
*Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2018*
*Selected as a 2017 Book of the Year in the Guardian and Daily Telegraph*

'A brilliant debut - a tender, nostalgic and, at times, darkly hilarious exploration of black boyhood, masculinity and grief. A gorgeous and necessary collection from one of my favourite writers' Warsan Shire

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.

About the Author:

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.