Our 2024 impact report is here! Read now
Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Kumukanda

Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Narrator Kayo Chingonyi

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 59 minutes
Language English
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Brought to you by Penguin.

*Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize 2018*

*Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award 2018*

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.

*Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Prize; Seamus Heaney Centre First Poetry Collection Prize; Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry; Roehampton Poetry Prize; Jhalak Prize 2018*

'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


ยฉ Kayo Chingonyi 2017 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

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, and a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry. In 2012, he was awarded a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, and was Associate Poet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 2015. His first full-length collection, Kumukanda, won the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Poetry Collection Prize, the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Jhalak Prize. Kayo was a Burgess Fellow at the Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, and an Associate Poet at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. He has performed his work at festivals and events around the world, is Poetry Editor for The White Review, and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Durham University.

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, and a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry. In 2012, he was awarded a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize, and was Associate Poet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 2015. His first full-length collection, Kumukanda, won the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Poetry Collection Prize, the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Jhalak Prize. Kayo was a Burgess Fellow at the Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, and an Associate Poet at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. He has performed his work at festivals and events around the world, is Poetry Editor for The White Review, and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Durham University.

Audiobook details

Author:

Narrator:
Kayo Chingonyi

ISBN:
9781529197662

Length:
59 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Random House

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

The book emerges as being about memory and identity in the best and broadest senseโ€ฆ Chingonyiโ€™s poetic voice and style are both highly entertaining and adaptable mixing form with free verse and jargon with slangโ€ฆ But for all its lyrical elegance and at times mannered diction, this is angry and defiant writing, determined to โ€œmaster the languageโ€, as โ€œThe Cricket Testโ€ has it, of privileged white male canonical literature as if to prove a pointโ€ฆ Chingonyi goes one better, using his lyric panache to honour pop references and cultural experiences of personal and communal significance while also turning the tables, casting a wry and intelligent eye on our wider attitudesโ€ฆ These terse, memorable poems are testament to the best of Chingonyiโ€™s gifts. Impassioned, witty, socially and politically engagedโ€ฆthe poems turn irony to impressive effect in dissecting our dubious โ€œpost-race momentโ€โ€ฆ Kumukanda is an authentic and convincing book of poems in its many nuanced portrayals and unflinching reflections; rarely is it content to gloss or deceiveโ€ฆ Kumukanda is an intricate and intense collection, heady with feeling but guided by thoughtful reflection Navigating the experience of growing up with music, flair and a jaw-dropping formal range, this collection is a thing of beauty Full of nostalgia and gentleness as well as being sharply observant Chingonyiโ€™s poems are full of questions that need asking. His gift is for pushing poems further than you expected them to go. [A] striking quest of a debut Powerfulโ€ฆ These poems are essential and urgent and shine a light on British culture in an unique and spellbinding way A brilliant debut โ€“ 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 A remarkable year for first collections. The best, for this reader, was Kayo Chingonyiโ€™s Kumukandaโ€ฆ Whether recalling his parentsโ€™ deaths or celebrating the art of the mixtape, Chingonyiโ€™s poise is astonishing His poems are intelligent and moving and find the perfect balance between intricacy and directness Chingonyi thrillingly integratesโ€ฆrhythms and rhymes with more conventional poetic metricsโ€ฆwith a rare energy, intelligence and sophistication [A] wonderful debutโ€ฆ A subtle and affecting, lyrical and powerful collection that explores boyhood, rites of passage, the ancient and the modern world Expand reviews
Our 2024 impact report is here! Read now