Showing results by narrator "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.

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.