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Kumukanda
‘A brilliant debut – a tender, nostalgic and at times darkly hilarious exploration of black boyhood, masculinity and grief – 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.
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.
58 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 1, 2017
19 people are currently reading
1021 people want to read
About the author
Kayo Chingonyi
14 books33 followersKayo Chingonyi is a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry and the author of two pamphlets, Some Bright Elegance (Salt, 2012) and The Colour of James Brown’s Scream (Akashic, 2016). His first full-length collection, Kumukanda, was published in June 2017 by Chatto & Windus and went on to win the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. Kayo has been invited to read from his work at venues and events across the UK and internationally. He was awarded the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and has completed residencies with Kingston University, Cove Park, First Story, The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and Royal Holloway University of London in partnership with Counterpoints Arts. He was Associate Poet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts from Autumn 2015 to Spring 2016, Anthony Burgess Fellow at Manchester University in 2018, and co-edited issue 62 of Magma Poetry and the Autumn 2016 edition of The Poetry Review. He is now poetry editor for The White Review. Kayo is also an emcee, producer, and DJ and regularly collaborates with musicians and composers both as a poet and a lyricist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews
May 16, 2018
so very poignant. the one on being orphaned late in life really haunts me, as well as the cricket match.
January 24, 2019
Some of the bare facts of Chingonyi’s life can be glimpsed in Kumukanda. He was born in Zambia in 1987 and moved to the UK when he was six after his father died. He lived in Newcastle, London and Essex and his mother died when he was just 13. He was an avid collector of music on cassette and fancied himself as a rapper: “K to the a to the y to the o, / lyrical G with a badboy flow” as the teenage Chingonyi announces in “Self-Portrait as a Garage Emcee”.
“But I resist the idea that the poems are my story in any authoritative way,” he says. “The poems are drawn from certain influences and experiences, but the act of creativity is to ask how can I move beyond that into sharing with someone a text or a poem that encourages them to reflect on certain things in their own life. And when I enter into that kind of conversation, with a reader or someone in an audience, then the poem really lives in that it has a life outside of my life.”
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.
He says missing out on the ritual served as a metaphor for other things that he had missed from a culture which was part of his life, but was remote; this led him to consider the events that had moved him “across that threshold into the adult world”. This book approximates such rites of passage in the absence of his original culture.
The enthusiasm that most obviously animates Kumukanda is music, specifically garage, grime and hip-hop. Chingonyi thrillingly integrates their rhythms and rhymes with more conventional poetic metrics – there is even a sonnet – in a collection that tackles race, identity, masculinity, migration, bereavement and longing, not to mention literary tradition, with a rare energy, intelligence and sophistication. The influence of Eminem is probed alongside that of Pinter and Lowell, as Kumukanda cuts through sterile delineations of page or stage by simply privileging excellence in language and literature, whatever its source.
He is particularly moved by those forms which unite story with song. “My work is always trying to achieve a balance between the written and oral traditions of literature, and so it makes sense to bring together traditional canonical poetic forms with forms which are a part of their own canon, to create a canon of my own.” One of my favorite poems of this collection showcases his love and care for music, it is entitled “Guide to Proper Mixtape Assembly”:
Kayo tries to reclaim a part of his original culture, and mix it with the one he found in the UK. He is trying to “Dance for the times / you’ve been stalked by store detectives / for a lady on a bus, for the look of disgust / on the face of a boy too young to understand / why he hates but only that he must.” He tries to find his place in the world by defining his own identity, by writing about it, and not letting other people's perception of him stand in his way. I wish him all the best.
“But I resist the idea that the poems are my story in any authoritative way,” he says. “The poems are drawn from certain influences and experiences, but the act of creativity is to ask how can I move beyond that into sharing with someone a text or a poem that encourages them to reflect on certain things in their own life. And when I enter into that kind of conversation, with a reader or someone in an audience, then the poem really lives in that it has a life outside of my life.”
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.
He says missing out on the ritual served as a metaphor for other things that he had missed from a culture which was part of his life, but was remote; this led him to consider the events that had moved him “across that threshold into the adult world”. This book approximates such rites of passage in the absence of his original culture.
Since I haven’t danced among my fellow initiates, following a looped procession from woods at the edge of a village, Tata’s people would think me unfinished – a child who never sloughed off the childish estate to cross the river boys of our tribe must cross in order to die and come back grown.“The death of parents is something that makes people grow up sooner than they otherwise would expect,” he says. “But there are other ways. Black men are particularly racialised and some of the ways they are viewed prejudicially prompt moments of having to grow up quickly. As a kid I was never in trouble with the police, but certain interactions with them were fraught because of stereotypical notions held on both sides. Those were moments where I had to learn to carry myself in a certain way, which was not the way a child should be learning to carry himself. There have been many things that stood in for that singular moment of initiation.”
I was raised in a strange land, by small increments: when I bathed my mother the days she was too weak, when auntie broke the news and I chose a yellow suit and white shoes to dress my mother’s body, at the grave-side when the man I almost grew to call dad, though we both needed a hug, shook my hand.
If my alternate self, who never left, could see me what would he make of these literary pretensions, this need to speak with a tongue that isn’t mine? Would he be strange to me as I to him, frowning as he greets me in the language of my father and my father’s father and my father’s father’s father?
The enthusiasm that most obviously animates Kumukanda is music, specifically garage, grime and hip-hop. Chingonyi thrillingly integrates their rhythms and rhymes with more conventional poetic metrics – there is even a sonnet – in a collection that tackles race, identity, masculinity, migration, bereavement and longing, not to mention literary tradition, with a rare energy, intelligence and sophistication. The influence of Eminem is probed alongside that of Pinter and Lowell, as Kumukanda cuts through sterile delineations of page or stage by simply privileging excellence in language and literature, whatever its source.
He is particularly moved by those forms which unite story with song. “My work is always trying to achieve a balance between the written and oral traditions of literature, and so it makes sense to bring together traditional canonical poetic forms with forms which are a part of their own canon, to create a canon of my own.” One of my favorite poems of this collection showcases his love and care for music, it is entitled “Guide to Proper Mixtape Assembly”:
The silence between songs can’t be modulated by anything other than held breath. You have to sit and wait, time the release of the pause button to the last tenth of a second so that the gap between each track is a smooth purr, a TDK or Memorex your masterwork. Don’t talk to me about your MP3 player, how, given the limitless choice, you hardly ever listen to one song for more than two minutes at a time. Do you know about stealing double As from the TV remote so you can listen to last night’s clandestine effort on the walk to school? You say you love music. Have you suffered the loss of a cassette so gnarled by a tape deck’s teeth it refuses to play the beat you’ve come to recognise by sound and not name? Have you carried that theme in your head these years in the faint hope you might know it when it finds you, in a far-flung café, as you stand to pay, frozen, and the barista has to ask if you’re okay?Kumukanda is a very personal collection. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be: What is lost is lost, never to be found again. Kayo traces the loss of his original culture, the loss of his parents (first his dad, then his mum), the loss of boyhood and innocence, the loss of language which now doesn't permit him to communicate with "his people" in a tongue natural to them.
Kayo tries to reclaim a part of his original culture, and mix it with the one he found in the UK. He is trying to “Dance for the times / you’ve been stalked by store detectives / for a lady on a bus, for the look of disgust / on the face of a boy too young to understand / why he hates but only that he must.” He tries to find his place in the world by defining his own identity, by writing about it, and not letting other people's perception of him stand in his way. I wish him all the best.
April 15, 2018
Casting
My agent says I have to use my street voice.
Though my talent is for rakes and fops I’ll drop
the necessary octaves, stifle a laugh
at the playwright’s misplaced get me blud and safe.
If I get it they’ll ask how long it takes me
to grow cornrows without the small screen’s knowing
wink. Three years RADA, two years rep and I’m sick
of playing lean dark men who may have guns.
I have a book of poems in my rucksack,
blank pad, two pens, tattered A-Z, headphones
that know Prokofiev as well as Prince Paul.
Review
February 23, 2018
(3.5) This would have been my choice for this past year’s Costa Poetry Prize (I have now read all four shortlisted titles). Chingonyi, who moved to the UK from Gambia when he was six years old, writes about rap music, losing his mother to illness, the African initiation rites he’s missed out on, being a grown-up orphan, and what it’s like to be typecast in black roles. Although he’s younger than me, we have some of the same memories of using a Walkman and making mix tapes (can you believe what counts as retro nowadays?!).
I especially liked “Some Bright Elegance,” which encourages the reader to dance with abandon (“Imagine / a packed Savoy Ballroom and slide across / the dusty floor as your zoot-suited Twenties / self, the feather in your hat from an ostrich, / the swagger in your step from the ochre dust of a West African village.”); “Alterity,” about being one of two colored kids in class and therefore inevitably cast as Melchior in the nativity play, and “Casting” (“Three years RADA, two years rep and I’m sick / of playing lean dark men who may have guns.”).
I especially liked “Some Bright Elegance,” which encourages the reader to dance with abandon (“Imagine / a packed Savoy Ballroom and slide across / the dusty floor as your zoot-suited Twenties / self, the feather in your hat from an ostrich, / the swagger in your step from the ochre dust of a West African village.”); “Alterity,” about being one of two colored kids in class and therefore inevitably cast as Melchior in the nativity play, and “Casting” (“Three years RADA, two years rep and I’m sick / of playing lean dark men who may have guns.”).
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October 5, 2018Groovy...
September 4, 2021
också courtesy of leksands biblioteks gallrade böcker! <3
och tror den gärna skulle lästs på engelska.
och tror den gärna skulle lästs på engelska.
July 5, 2025
Chingonyi's rhythmic words accompanied me on a long train ride today and some took me on a different journey back through time... and far ahead
And this haunting one...
"I hope you hold on to your wonder
that you'll never grow so stiffly poised
a scent or song is not enough to conjure
that smile of yours, the fullness of your voice."
"Kid brother, we breathers have made an art
of negation, see how a buckled drum
is made from a man's beating heart
and a fixed gaze is a loaded weapon."
"knowing, even in this harshest of lights,
what's unrecorded is a reverie
faded in a year, gone in a century?"
And this haunting one...
"What if the wind blowing through
the french doors of your childhood
is the house's way of saying goodbye
and when you call out, answering
yourself, greeting the gone out of habit,
you hear, for the first time, the timbre
of your voice how someone else might?"
April 5, 2018
The opening poems made me chuckle, they filled me with "me too" moments, and were reminders from my childhood. Every boy during the 2000's became an Emcee and they all became sweet boy's with wavy hair or cornrows.
The next selection of poems focus on racism, Chingonyi from his school memories describes within "The Cricket Test" the changing room as "a shrine to apartheid. When I crossed the threshold, Danny asked me why I'd stand here when I could be there, with my kind." He further illustrates this in "Casting" and "Callbacks" with his struggles to find work as an actor.
The collection includes a selection of touching poems dealing with the death of Chingonyi's mother and father. I was particularly moved by "A Proud Blemish", where Chingonyi details how he copes with the realisation of his mother becoming sick and refusing to call her dead.
Loved the varied selection of poems.
The next selection of poems focus on racism, Chingonyi from his school memories describes within "The Cricket Test" the changing room as "a shrine to apartheid. When I crossed the threshold, Danny asked me why I'd stand here when I could be there, with my kind." He further illustrates this in "Casting" and "Callbacks" with his struggles to find work as an actor.
The collection includes a selection of touching poems dealing with the death of Chingonyi's mother and father. I was particularly moved by "A Proud Blemish", where Chingonyi details how he copes with the realisation of his mother becoming sick and refusing to call her dead.
Loved the varied selection of poems.
February 18, 2019
Emotive. Unique with a through line of youthful UK vibes. The middle got really dark. Lots of talk of what seemed like disbelief at discrimination.. where does this disbelief exist for the rest of us? Anyway, I really enjoyed Kayo’s poetry.
August 27, 2021
”I was raised in a strange land, by small increments:
when I bathed my mother the days she was too weak,
when auntie broke the news and I chose a yellow suit
and white shoes to dress my mother’s body,
at the grave-side when the man I almost grew to call
dad, though we both needed a hug, shook my hand.”
Chingonyi writes about growing up in between cultures.
About finding a way in a country where he stands out as an other.
Connecting with his ancestral culture, having been deprived.
His poems range from trivial to profound.
His words project feelings and evoke empathy without pandering.
They speak of loss.
They speak of growth.
“I’m tired of this strength. Let me be bereft”
when I bathed my mother the days she was too weak,
when auntie broke the news and I chose a yellow suit
and white shoes to dress my mother’s body,
at the grave-side when the man I almost grew to call
dad, though we both needed a hug, shook my hand.”
Chingonyi writes about growing up in between cultures.
About finding a way in a country where he stands out as an other.
Connecting with his ancestral culture, having been deprived.
His poems range from trivial to profound.
His words project feelings and evoke empathy without pandering.
They speak of loss.
They speak of growth.
“I’m tired of this strength. Let me be bereft”
May 1, 2018
How political correctness can make you a coward. I liked this a lot, I hope mostly because the poems are good ones, vivid, evocative, clever in ways that don't make you go 'oh, look he's being *clever*, they jerk you around the way poetry is supposed to, jerk you out of your comfy seat. Some of them are funny too--funny serious poetry, what a concept. But part of what I liked is also that the author presents his life as normal, ordinary, as anyone's life (that is, anyone who is a poet), it might be yours or mine, except that I'm a late-middle-age white woman and he's a young black man, and as any good knee-jerk wet liberal like me knows, there's an abyss between any such two lives, and anything I say from my vantage risks being hurtfully the wrong thing. Books like this, I feel, hopefully, might go to close that abyss?--a little?? I had a similar feeling about THE HATE U GIVE which is another 5 star book, because it is amazingly good, but also for that 'anyone's life' quality--that all us humans are more alike than we are different, our families and our worlds are *more alike* than they are different. We can recognise and empathise and get alongside other humans, no matter how *spectacularly* different their lives are (or seem to be, or are by our respective societies bounded and guarded as 'different'. There is, I am discouragedly aware, a whole gibbering host of discussion about what a member of a non-central or non-mainstream or non-ruling society may 'pay' to use a common language in a way that the central, mainstream and/or ruling classes can relate to. I'm not going there today. I just want to celebrate what a good book this is). So, hey. We're all human. Make a note . . .
August 15, 2025
It’s funny trying to review a poetry book because I have no idea how to get into words how to succinctly and justly describe what the book is about without starting with clumsy, broad strokes that hardly do the poetry justice.
But to do just that, Chingonyi’s ‘Kumukanda’ is about the process of growing up as a young black man with the shadow of his very early life and family culture from Zambia. What is it to find community in the UK? How is race perceived in the UK? How are emotions treated by men? What memories exist culturally, and why do some endure? I’m lazily butchering some of the topics and questions tackled so deftly in his poetry.
It’s brilliant poetry that does what I think well-crafted poetry does: forces you to pause and think hard about why the carefully constructed short phrase works so well and captures such an abstract emotion so succinctly.
I’m looking forward to teaching it to my GCSE class. But for those outside of this, if you loved Caleb Azumah Nelson’s ‘Small Worlds’, you’ll love this too.
But to do just that, Chingonyi’s ‘Kumukanda’ is about the process of growing up as a young black man with the shadow of his very early life and family culture from Zambia. What is it to find community in the UK? How is race perceived in the UK? How are emotions treated by men? What memories exist culturally, and why do some endure? I’m lazily butchering some of the topics and questions tackled so deftly in his poetry.
It’s brilliant poetry that does what I think well-crafted poetry does: forces you to pause and think hard about why the carefully constructed short phrase works so well and captures such an abstract emotion so succinctly.
I’m looking forward to teaching it to my GCSE class. But for those outside of this, if you loved Caleb Azumah Nelson’s ‘Small Worlds’, you’ll love this too.
November 9, 2020
Thoughts on what it is to be both British, and not British, all at once.
Kumukanda means 'initiation', and is the name given to the rites of passage a young Zambian man in the Luvale tribe must pass through.
In these poems, Kayo looks at the things that have initiated him into UK culture, whilst still carrying his Zambian heritage. I particularly gelled with music theme that lies in some of the poems, and this is a very memorable and touching collection.
Kumukanda means 'initiation', and is the name given to the rites of passage a young Zambian man in the Luvale tribe must pass through.
In these poems, Kayo looks at the things that have initiated him into UK culture, whilst still carrying his Zambian heritage. I particularly gelled with music theme that lies in some of the poems, and this is a very memorable and touching collection.
May 16, 2018
The authenticity of KC's voice is hard to overstate in Kumukanda. To such great affect, KC's world is illuminated, exposing divides we're confronted with daily — race — yet wholly incapable of navigating. A great insight into a fascinating perspective.
July 7, 2018
2,5 🌟 Jag är ovan att läsa poesi så därför är mitt omdöme av denna poesisamling inte något att ta på för stort allvar. Flera vackra och gripande dikter om att växa upp som svart man och att hantera sitt kulturella arv.
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February 19, 2025picked this up off a library shelf more or less at random because it was slim and I liked the cover and was ultimately pretty pleased with it. you’ve heard some of what he has to say before, but he says it well
November 26, 2019
Om mitt andra jag, han som stannade kvar, kunde se mig
vad skulle han tro om de här litterära pretentionerna,
detta behov av att tala på ett tungomål som inte är mitt?
Skulle vi vara lika främmande för varandra, skulle han
misstroget hälsa mig på det språk som talades av
min far och min fars far och min fars fars far?
vad skulle han tro om de här litterära pretentionerna,
detta behov av att tala på ett tungomål som inte är mitt?
Skulle vi vara lika främmande för varandra, skulle han
misstroget hälsa mig på det språk som talades av
min far och min fars far och min fars fars far?
October 7, 2017
For those orphaned late in life
What if the wind blowing through
the french doors of your childhood
is the house’s way of saying goodbye
and when you call out, answering
yourself, greeting the gone out of habit
you hear, for the first time, the timbre
of your voice how someone else might?
What if the wind blowing through
the french doors of your childhood
is the house’s way of saying goodbye
and when you call out, answering
yourself, greeting the gone out of habit
you hear, for the first time, the timbre
of your voice how someone else might?
Read
November 16, 2020This is the first time I have read Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi. We read it in literature class. It looked like an interesting read, because the book's cover intro said that it was about the journey of the author from a boy to a man. I did not read it very thoroughly, and I might come back to it in the future.
A poetry collection, it talked about the music his family listened to, and that he himself listened to. It talked about him plundering his mom's cassette tapes and using them to record emcees whose lyrics he studied in class on his walkman when the teacher can not see it and at night in his bed when his mom can not hear him. He liked poetry because he loved music, and in an interview he said that he had role models who wrote and published poems who showed him what was possible.
He was born in Zambia but grew up in the UK. In England, where he lived, he went to stores that sold food from his culture. He talked about hair. He named a baby, probably his niece, in a way that is not British. He used words from Bemba, which was a language used in Zambia.
He talked about his father's death and the deaths of both of his parents when he was young. He talked about people he loved.
He talked about racism. He cursed the N-word. And he saw it used in scripts and poems. There was a game of cricket that he played before college where he had to choose between playing on a team of white people or playing on a team of black people. He chose to play on the team of white people. I'm not sure but my interpretation is that he does not want segregation.
I didn't read very thoroughly this time, but I will come back to this in the future.
A poetry collection, it talked about the music his family listened to, and that he himself listened to. It talked about him plundering his mom's cassette tapes and using them to record emcees whose lyrics he studied in class on his walkman when the teacher can not see it and at night in his bed when his mom can not hear him. He liked poetry because he loved music, and in an interview he said that he had role models who wrote and published poems who showed him what was possible.
He was born in Zambia but grew up in the UK. In England, where he lived, he went to stores that sold food from his culture. He talked about hair. He named a baby, probably his niece, in a way that is not British. He used words from Bemba, which was a language used in Zambia.
He talked about his father's death and the deaths of both of his parents when he was young. He talked about people he loved.
He talked about racism. He cursed the N-word. And he saw it used in scripts and poems. There was a game of cricket that he played before college where he had to choose between playing on a team of white people or playing on a team of black people. He chose to play on the team of white people. I'm not sure but my interpretation is that he does not want segregation.
I didn't read very thoroughly this time, but I will come back to this in the future.
December 1, 2024
The way Chingonyi talks about sound and music is just so profound ugh.
“As from the TV remote so you can listen to last night’s clandestine effort on the walk to school? You say you love music. Have you suffered the loss of a cassette so gnarled by a tape deck’s teeth it refuses to play the beat you’ve come to recognise by sound and not name? Have you carried that theme in your head these years in the faint hope you might know it when it finds you, in a far-flung café, as you stand to pay, frozen, and the barista has to ask if you’re okay?”
And this:
“Kid brother, we breathers have made an art
of negation, see how a buckled drum
is made from a man’s beating heart
and a fixed gaze is a loaded weapon.”
Ugh.
“We’ve time to touch like we used to –
the harshness of the journey written
into the depth of a clinch. Chest to chest,
your head in the cleft of my breastbone.
Coconut oil, laundry detergent, sweat,
dry shampoo, Burberry Weekend.
Garam masala tang in the troublesome
hair inherited by our possible daughter.
I kneel, the better to drown in your scent.
Since I’m remembering this, or making it up,
there is only darkness; our bodies speaking.
Eat, you ask. I eat – savouring
your aftertaste: tart but sweet, the inside
of a cheek, cured meat, a local delicacy.”
Don't you ever talk to me.
“As from the TV remote so you can listen to last night’s clandestine effort on the walk to school? You say you love music. Have you suffered the loss of a cassette so gnarled by a tape deck’s teeth it refuses to play the beat you’ve come to recognise by sound and not name? Have you carried that theme in your head these years in the faint hope you might know it when it finds you, in a far-flung café, as you stand to pay, frozen, and the barista has to ask if you’re okay?”
And this:
“Kid brother, we breathers have made an art
of negation, see how a buckled drum
is made from a man’s beating heart
and a fixed gaze is a loaded weapon.”
Ugh.
“We’ve time to touch like we used to –
the harshness of the journey written
into the depth of a clinch. Chest to chest,
your head in the cleft of my breastbone.
Coconut oil, laundry detergent, sweat,
dry shampoo, Burberry Weekend.
Garam masala tang in the troublesome
hair inherited by our possible daughter.
I kneel, the better to drown in your scent.
Since I’m remembering this, or making it up,
there is only darkness; our bodies speaking.
Eat, you ask. I eat – savouring
your aftertaste: tart but sweet, the inside
of a cheek, cured meat, a local delicacy.”
Don't you ever talk to me.
November 30, 2017
This really is a transcending collection of poems, in that, although the title alludes to a theme of Zambian tribal rites and the initiation a boy in said country endures to reach adulthood, they can be applied to pretty much any caste or social group rituals. If you can remember sneaking a Walkman into class, and secretly listening to music with the headphone cord winding, hidden up your blazer arm, for example, you will be hit by nostalgia on many occasions throughout.
Chingonyi has a fascinating style - he is casual, yet occasionally hits on deeper subjects, which makes these sudden outbursts of surliness, all the more shocking and effective.
“Eminem ruined everything. I had to learn the words to ‘Stan’, borrow the nasal whine, slide into a drawl midway between London and New York and nowhere near Detroit. In time I could rattle off The Slim Shady LP line for line, though no amount of practise could conjure the pale skin and blue eyes that made Marshall a 'poet' and me just another brother who could rhyme”
His musical roots and subject matter knowledge, are evident throughout - indeed, you could imagine a lot of this material, being spat out as bars in a rap, which is ironic as very little of his prose actually rhymes.
Chingonyi has a fascinating style - he is casual, yet occasionally hits on deeper subjects, which makes these sudden outbursts of surliness, all the more shocking and effective.
“Eminem ruined everything. I had to learn the words to ‘Stan’, borrow the nasal whine, slide into a drawl midway between London and New York and nowhere near Detroit. In time I could rattle off The Slim Shady LP line for line, though no amount of practise could conjure the pale skin and blue eyes that made Marshall a 'poet' and me just another brother who could rhyme”
His musical roots and subject matter knowledge, are evident throughout - indeed, you could imagine a lot of this material, being spat out as bars in a rap, which is ironic as very little of his prose actually rhymes.
November 19, 2024
Chingonyi has a gift. These poems are blank verse but feel like they rhyme, in their clarity and rightness. Most of the poems in the first third of this slim chapbook express forms of nostalgia (or maybe just memory) of a street music scene the author must have been a part of as a teen. They’re accomplished poems, but not universal, and I don’t understand enough of the context for them to connect emotionally. But the second half of the collection has powerful, relatable poems, one after another - poems about colonialism and independence, about stories handed down from his Zambian parents, about losing them, about deracination and also connection, family, desire, and love.
Favorites for me include ‘Curfew’, where a respectable aunt offers a glimpse of her badass youth; ‘Malumbo’, a blessing, on a niece perhaps, or on the child of a family friend; ‘Loch Long, by Ardgarten, Argyll’, sheer romance; ‘Kumukanda’, a name for boys’ initiation rites, and a fitting title for the whole collection, as the author’s first full book; ‘Alternate Take’ and ‘A Proud Blemish’, on losing his father and then his mother; and ‘In Defence of Darkness’, on erotic love.
Favorites for me include ‘Curfew’, where a respectable aunt offers a glimpse of her badass youth; ‘Malumbo’, a blessing, on a niece perhaps, or on the child of a family friend; ‘Loch Long, by Ardgarten, Argyll’, sheer romance; ‘Kumukanda’, a name for boys’ initiation rites, and a fitting title for the whole collection, as the author’s first full book; ‘Alternate Take’ and ‘A Proud Blemish’, on losing his father and then his mother; and ‘In Defence of Darkness’, on erotic love.
June 25, 2018
i liked it but i didn't love it. It had quite a bit 'when i was young' nostalgia for teenagehood, and quite a bit 'racist things that happened to me' which is good for me to read but i would criticise because he sets it up like 'look at this bad thing that happened to me' not speaking first-person accusatory 'this bad thing happened to me and i'm angry', which reminded me of how i whinge, i always go 'this happened' trying to get the other person to say 'that's terrible', which is to do with my bullying when i was a child, recreating the situation over and over again trying to get the other person to 'rescue' me, which is annoying and maddening, so i hated that. He can write and a few poems are really good but too many didn't have enough substance for me. I'm kind of hard to please too, plus Plath/Mandelstam isn't how people write anymore, different topics presented differently, but i'm stuck in the mud. I'd say get it from the library and watch out for his next one. I'm glad i bought it, because it's worth funding.
May 30, 2018
Chingonyi has caught a whirlwind, winning the Dylan Thomas Prize and reading at literary events. This collection is fascinating. The first 6 poems were relatable to anyone from a certain era. "Self-Portrait as a Garage Emcee" is my entire childhood, I could have written nearly every word. While reading those first 6 poems I was enthralled, and ready to proclaim this one of my favorite recent collections.
The middle of the book dipped for me a great deal. The poems were still well written, evocative, and full of flourishing language, but they began to tread on some cliched thematic territory, and lost a bit of their unique flavor.
The collection regained its momentum when Kayo began writing about his parents, and his grief. His thoughts on cultural displacement, again, were words I could have written myself.
Overall this was an excellent collection, making Chingonyi a writer I will pay close attention to.
The middle of the book dipped for me a great deal. The poems were still well written, evocative, and full of flourishing language, but they began to tread on some cliched thematic territory, and lost a bit of their unique flavor.
The collection regained its momentum when Kayo began writing about his parents, and his grief. His thoughts on cultural displacement, again, were words I could have written myself.
Overall this was an excellent collection, making Chingonyi a writer I will pay close attention to.
November 20, 2018
I had the pleasure of hearing Kayo read and speaking to him when I was abroad in London. I have to say that the sonic qualities of his poetry are incredible (She speeds up by Londis/ past friends pressed against shutters// huddled, from the cold, round a zoot/ two-sed then snuffed by a scuffed shoe). He covers a wide range of topics in very few pages (race, music, grieving, growing) but it's all with same attention to rhythm and elegant assessment of his place in the world. The collection reads like a mixtape; it's infused with such musicality but each word is chosen with such care. Kayo writes in one of his poems "no amount of practise could conjure the pale skin/ and blue eyes that made Marshall a poet and me/ just another brother who could rhyme." But doubtlessly, this collection is rife with fierce intelligence and a deep want for the world to belong to itself.
November 18, 2020
Learning about Chingonyi's history and life in this book through the use of poetry showed me a new perspective of reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. He was able to evoke a mix of emotions and feelings throughout the different stories for me as the reader. The stories ranged from joyful times during youth to funny times to dark times in the face of discrimination. This rollercoaster of poems was unique to read, and opened my eyes to a new style of writing. While there were some aspects I could relate to, there were others I couldn't - like the racism- which made me feel more for the character in these writings.
Read
April 24, 2025‘Buy yourself a copy of Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. Turn to page 83. Read the fourteenth sentence aloud. Speaking these words will cause a set of coordinates to be burned into the skin of your left forearm. Follow them till you reach a war monument where you will see a man in a homemade lobster costume. Ask him if he has any suppositories. Let him guide you to a quiet spot where hell produce an apple strudel which you should eat. Outside a '67 Pontiac Firebird will wait. Take the driver's seat by force. Under the seat you'll find a sheaf of papers. On these papers will be written, in a script only you can decipher, your original name.’
August 25, 2025
This was such a powerful, lyrical collection. Chingonyi weaves together themes of identity, heritage, music, and belonging in a way that feels both intimate and universal. Some of the poems hit me right in the chest, while others took a bit more work to sit with, but that’s part of the charm, it’s not a collection you rush through. I especially loved the way he blends references to hip-hop with reflections on culture, it gives the poems a rhythm and energy that really stick. Overall this was beautiful, thoughtful, and worth coming back to. Definitely one I’ll be dipping into again.
January 24, 2018
For those teaching Heart of Darkness, the poem “Legerdemain” is a must read as it is a response to Leopold II rational for colonial occupation of the Congo. It also alluded to George Washington Williams’s response to Leopold II.
Other selections in the collection illuminate the struggle to navigate two worlds, that of Africa and that of England.
This is a collection that will appeal to students.
Other selections in the collection illuminate the struggle to navigate two worlds, that of Africa and that of England.
This is a collection that will appeal to students.
May 4, 2018
There are some references that I wasn't familiar with but it doesn't distract from the thought and feeling behind the words. The poems have a beat to it, almost like rap and it flows easily. The imagery and use of words invoke nostalgia in some cases and au others a sense of empathy when he talks about dealing with his race in a country that's predominantly white.
At every reading you'll discover more depth and understanding
At every reading you'll discover more depth and understanding
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