Nick Makoha

Nick Makoha's debut poetry pamphlet bristles with the energy and imagery of an epic imagination. The braggadocio of a child whose father is absent, the bravado of a child fleeing the only country and diet he knows and the reluctant tenderness of a young man in love all feature in the deck of cards he deals from. A first pamphlet of bewildering promise."

The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man

Warsan Shire

Ladan Osman

Tjawangwa Dema

Tsitsi Ella Jaji

Clifton Gachagua

Len Verwey

This eight-piece boxed set, an African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) project, features the work of seven African poets, with an introduction by Kwame Dawes, APBF series editor, and Chris Abani. The boxed set is an annual project starting in 2014 to ensure the publication of seven chapbooks by African poets through participating publishers. Publication is made possible through Slapering Hol Press, in association with APBF and the literary journal Prairie Schooner, with support from The Poetry Foundation. The chapbook contains: • Mandible by TJ Dema • The Cartographer of Water by Clifton Gachagua • Carnaval by Tsitsi Jaji • The Second Republic by Nick Makoha • Ordinary Heaven by Ladan Osman • Our Men Do Not Belong To Us by Wasan Shire • Otherwise Everything Goes On by Len Verwey

A Chapbook boxed set

Seven New Generation African Poets

'The mouthmark Book of Poetry' is an anthology of the individual-author titles published under the mouthmark poetry pamphlet series, comprising the work of Nick Makoha, Inua Ellams, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Jessica Horn, Truth Thomas, Denise Saul, Malika Booker, Janett Plummer and Warsan Shire. The series was conceived by flipped eye publishing's senior editor, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, as a means to get poets from non-mainstream backgrounds - including performance - into print. It was revolutionary for two reasons; first, it was a pamphlet series developed with a specific aim (later, tall-lighthouse would launch its pilot series, and, much later, Faber would launch its New Poets Initiative); second, it was a finite series - to end after ten pamphlets. After some success with the first two pamphlets in the series, Nick Makoha's 'The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man' (2005) and Inua Ellams' '13 Fairy Negro Tales' (2005), the Arts Council of England provided funding for the next four. It took six years for the series to be completed, but its impact far exceeded expectations. Authors such as Inua Ellams, Jacob Sam-La Rose (later editor of the last pamphlet in the series), Malika Booker, Nick Makoha and Warsan Shire, have risen to international prominence; three of the pamphlets were cited by the Poetry Book Society pamphlet selectors for their quality; two of the poets feature in the new Penguin Modern Poets series; and Truth Thomas's from his pamphlet 'Party of Black' (2006) was chosen for Nikki Giovanni's 'The 100 Best African American Poems' (Sourcebooks, 2010). Crucially, the series has retailed admirably as well, with over 50,000 copies sold at events - and through conventional retail channels. Initially released exactly four years ago as a hardback that retained hallmarks of the iconic mouthmark series, such as the distinctive brown paper-look cover with bold black designs, this low-priced paperback edition seeks to introduce more readers to the work of the nine brilliant poets published under the series.

The Mouthmark Book of Poetry

In direct narrative terms the poems in this collection relate to the horrors of the civil war that ousted the brutal tyranny of Idi Amin in Uganda, a war of liberation that brought its own barbarous atrocities. In political terms the poems chart the impact of imperialism and neo-colonialism that lay behind those traumas in the life of the nation. In personal terms, the poems are framed between the contrary pulls of attachment and flight, exile and longing. At their heart is an unwavering curiosity about how people behave in extreme situations, and what this reveals about our common human capacities to indulge grandiose visions, betray them, dissemble, seek revenge and kill. There is no presumption of innocence. There may be flight, but there is no standing aside. The narrator can dream (but is it a dream?) of a "dead man/who has been stung by the invisible bee of my bullet". There is much darkness of reference in the collection, but also a hopeful search for truthfulness and trust as the only things that matter. The poems - as poems of grace, control and beauty of image - demonstrate the power of the best poetry to speak of difficult things in a way that enlightens, not merely horrifies. The care in the making and shaping of the poems bears witness to the evident fact that for Nick Makoha poetry became "This rock [...] a sanctuary from which I can repair the ruins". Nick Makoha's debut collection is named for the 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize-winning poem "Kingdom of Gravity".

Nick Makoha

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