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As a young boy, Nick Makoha fled Idi Amin's dictatorship in Uganda and has since resided in Kenya, Saudi Arabia and currently London. His debut collection Kingdom of Gravity was nominated by The Guardian as one of the best books of 2017 and his poems have appeared in The New York Times and Poetry Review, among others. He is a Creative Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Goldsmiths working to create an in-depth online digital archive of the Metic experiences of Black British Writers. Nick will host the spoken word event 'The Power of Poetry' on Sunday, 19th May at Dulwich College. Tell us a little about your experience as a young child, fleeing from Uganda with your mother
It was not something at the time I actively remember. I was four years old at the time. My Mum as any mother would, tried to protect me from the events that were occurring in my country. I remember the sensation of being on a plane. I also remember travelling on the underground and being interrogated at Heathrow. It was not till I was much older that my mother shared how she smuggled me out of the country via matatu (bus). Listening to her courage and determination inspired me to write the play The Dark(Oberon 2018) that describes the night we fled the country. The play was produced by fuel Theatre and directed by the genius Roy Alexander-Weise.
Has that experience had any impact on your poetry and was poetry a way of coping?
Well the simple answer is yes. In many ways the poet emerged because I had to leave my country. England became my country of exile. I am proud to be both Ugandan and African. However much of my life and particularly my formative years have been spent making other countries my home Kenya, Saudi Arabia and England.
You started writing poetry as a child for a hobby, when did you realise that it was going to play a much larger part in your life?
Poetry was always important in my life but as a child there was nothing to show me that one could make a living from it. There are probably easier ways of existence that would have left me incomplete. Becoming a poet was a leap of faith. As a child I naively thought that everyone wrote poetry. For me it was a hobby I could not shake or get tired of.
At what point did you take the decision to leave your banking job to pursue a career in poetry and why did you burn your suits in the process!
My life had come to a crossroads either I conform and complain that my life never turned out the way I wanted to or I make something of the forming passion for poetry. If I fail then I would know that I put my all. The two books that inspired me were Letters to a Young Poetby Rainer Maria Rilke and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra. Burning my banking suits was at the time me displaying my anger that I had let my life coast by. In hindsight I realise it was a symbolic metaphor of burning my fear of failure.
What themes do you explore in Kingdom of Gravity andtell us about your journeyin producing the book
Caryl Phillips made a great point at the 2019 Bocas Lit Festival in Trinidad. He said no writer should start his enquiry by theme. You first have to have something to say, then you have to find the right voice to say it with. I wanted to tell the unbiased story of the Ugandan people during the Idi Amin dictatorship.
Poetry in the form of spoken word seems to be on the rise and gaining in popularity, why do you think this is?
Spoken word goes through phases as each generation finds its voice. What you call a rise is the knocking at the door of a new generation asking questions about the world and their place in it.
Tell us about your role at Goldsmiths University where you are creating a digital archive of the Metic experiences of Black British Writers
I am investigating the Metic experience of Black poets. Poets who are resident aliens. In other words poets who belong to more than one geographical place. How do these geographies impact on the way they exist and write poetry?
What advice would you give to any aspiring poets?
Be open to learning and reading. Build craft over finesse. Live your life because that is where the stories are.
The Power of Poetry: Caleb Femi, Yomi Sode & Guests Sunday, 19th May 3PM, Farha Auditorium, Dulwich College

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Interview with Nick Makoha, Writer and Poet – Dulwich Festival

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As a young boy, Nick Makoha fled Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda and has since resided in Kenya, Saudi Arabia and currently London. His debut collection Kingdom of Gravity was nominated by The Guardian as one of the best books of 2017 and his poems have appeared in The New York Times and Poetry Review, […]

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Makoha is known for works that use poignant imagery to capture significant moments (historical, personal, often both). In 'The Long Duration of a Split Second', a powerful piece that speaks to the transformative nature of tragedy and tyranny, he demonstrates his mastery of context. Responding to Forensic Architecture's project of the same name, his writing is itself forensic, meticulously disentangling every detail of the moments leading up to the killing of Yaqub Musa Al-Qia'an during the 2017 police raid of Umm al-Hiran. It is not at all surprising that Makoha has also found success in playwriting, as he reveals here a firm grasp on the nature of drama. Every object has a clear role to play in the slowly unfolding scene; "A car horn shrieked like an unfed / child to introduce the theory of infinite endings." and "four gunshots made visible by a cloud of hot air invent a new kind of time." Despite painting such an evocative picture, Makoha is persistent in reminding the reader that we are ourselves witnessing the scene through camera lenses, our understanding made imperfect by our limited perspective. This brings a sense of urgency to his precise and insightful writing, as we attempt to make sense, through language that itself "lacks fluency" , of these disquieting images.

'Basquiat asks the poet about Death' is another poem which demonstrates Makoha's discerning awareness of people's relationship to their circumstances and surroundings, as he invites us into a more personal snapshot this time. The poem provides a reminiscent illustration of the sense of not belonging, as Makoha walks us through the dichotomy of his inner and outer experience (appropriate in a response to Basquiat) at this lavish rooftop party. Fellow poet Richard Scott described how Makoha's writing "never reaches for exact answers" and instead unearths "a sheer resonance in the perhaps shared symbols of life creating a tense and important kind of empathy". This piece is a perfect example of just that, as Makoha glimpses his country, weeks away from bankruptcy, reflected in the shine of his cutlery. In listening to Makoha's recording of this poem, we can feel the internal struggle he experiences here, "as if I needed the reminder of how one can be in two places at once." A soft solemnity can be heard in his voice, as he speaks of "watching death" in this party, in his country, and in himself.

Makoha's poetry carefully constructs images which are likely to sink deep into the heart and mind of the reader. The inherent turbulence of his work resounds through the body, stirring up the important questions that aid us in our search for meaning amongst chaos. This collection, filled to the brim with exquisitely crafted metaphor and syntax, is bound to both devastate and enthral.

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Nick Makoha is the author of 'The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man' (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2005), 'The Second Republic' (Slapering Hol Press, 2014), 'The Kingdom of Gravity' (Peepal Tree Press, 2017) and 'Resurrection Man' (Jai-Alai Books, 2018)

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@NickMakoha

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Nick Makoha reads "Kingdom of Gravity" at our event on Virgil's Aeneid

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@nick.makoha

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Nick Makoha and our students

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After leaving Uganda as a child, Nick Makoha lost his native language. But for the prize-winning writer, it is poetry that has become his mother tongue. We met him as he spoke with German pupils as...

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Nick Makoha's collection of poetry

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Shortlisted for the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. "Nick Makoha's poems animate in the space between story and song. His sentences unwind full of 'axe heads, shanks, short rope, blades, some poison and all its animal understanding.' His imagery and insights are strung along an electrified syntax.

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The British Council Literature Seminar 2018 with poet Nick Makoha at Friedrich Ebert Gymnasium

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The British Council Literature Seminar 2018 with poet Nick Makoha at Friedrich Ebert Gymnasium

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January 24th, 2018

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Tate  Remixed   Nick Makoha  Turner Prize

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Nick's poem, Vistas, reflects on how controversy surrounding the Turner Prize is a great thing for stirring artistic debate. Nick says: "We all have our own point of view, both in art and in general. Our own way of seeing the world can become so entrenched so as to detach us from those around us.

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Spoke-Lab: Theatre Royal Stratford East - Nick Makoha

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Nick Makoha's latest piece - as part of Spoke-Lab at Theatre Royal Stratford East

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Poet Nick Makoha is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and a Fellow of The Complete Works in the UK. He won the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize and the Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize 2016 for his manuscript Resurrection Man. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Rialto, The Triquarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Wasafiri. Find him at www.nickmakoha.com
Candidate A
For the record, he loves his own reflection,
this farmer's son from the delta. A splendid type.

Bone from the neck up, trained in wickedness,
born to lead, useful against the Mau Mau.

Unprovoked, he once cracked a cow's skull
with flat palms as the beast stared at him.

Did the same to three cattle herders at Lake Turkana.
Reached into their necks to eat their intestines (allegedly).

He should have been court-martialled,
especially after the assassination attempt.

Such men rise in the ranks and can only be removed
by death or revolt. I suggest we seduce him with wives.

Surround him with ceremony, regulation and rules
even though secretly he feels they do not apply to him.

Feed him with titles: His Excellency, Field Marshall,
Effendi etcetera. His cravings have no limit.

We can use distrust of competition to our advantage.
He will demand acclaim in an unbridled urge to destroy.

Easily compensated, he does not accumulate goods
or possessions for the future, opting for immediate gratification.

While he buys friends, kills citizens without fear of god or religion,
in his effort to be remembered, we will make our mark.
Comrade
Comrade! Take the fire, its marrow and ash.
Take what vanishes and now repeat.

Without risk take the nation, its boundary.
If it miscarries take the calves and now repeat.

Take the soul and its vigour - make us vagabond.
Take the women and their fruit and now repeat.

Take the musician's tambourine and tilt of hip,
the wisdom a body forgets in motion and now repeat.

Take this world, its reflection, my memory of it,
place it in the boot of your car and now repeat.

Take the mountains, their wind and silence,
their gram and ounce and now repeat.

Take the tomb, its sharp edge and warriors,
all their bloody exhaustion and now repeat.

Take the future and her search for freedom,
for an alias along the wall of time and now repeat.

Take our sleep as it narrows and what it drinks
ourselves losing ourselves and now repeat.
Black Death
Two men who have never had a country of their own
fall out over a girl in a bar. In place of war they pull off their shirts,
lunatics in an embrace, as a barmaid fills my glass with local ale.

Policemen hang out of armed cars with sophisticated weapons.
Fleas fry on their backs as a ricochet gives voice to the air.
At full stretch a camera blinks at an unshaven male, clearly dead.

They are beating his body while I stand outside myself.
A year from now I will suffer the same death by water.
This body will be a map in the dark, moving towards a shore.

By the open stove of my wife's village there will be death by surprise,
death by marriage, death by having rummaged into the past,
into the distant past of a man that neither of us remembers.

After boycott marches there will be death by placards.
In radio silence Israeli ground troops will storm a home
looking for the Archbishop. Death by Judas kiss.

Lizard-coloured helicopters filled with embassy-men and snipers
with walkie talkies will signal for death by longshot. Demonstrators
behind masks with eyes like loaded dice will ask for death by decay,

the body turning black, bloodlet like a pig. The crowd is here
offering false compliments to an immigrant on his knees.
Death by confession - words that are not your own.

A note whispered in earshot of a New York Times news crew
as man sets fire to himself. The body now an animal bent double
a shadow of vague form promising to raise itself from the earth.

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Poet Nick Makoha is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and a Fellow of The Complete Works in the UK. He won the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize and the Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize 2016 for his manuscript Resurrection Man.

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Transforming People's Relationship to Language

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Transforming People's Relationship to Language

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Poets' Perspectives: Religion & War Part of Belief and Beyond BeliefJoin poets from Uganda, Sri Lanka, Syria, Iraq and Spain explore the conflicts that have affected their lives and the...

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Poets' Perspectives: Religion & War Part of Belief and Beyond BeliefJoin poets from Uganda, Sri Lanka, Syria, Iraq and Spain explore the conflicts that have affected their lives and the...