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The Poetry Lab

Handcrafted by Nick Makoha

Kingdom of Gravity

2017 Shortlist. Forward Prize For Best First Collection.

The Dark

Shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award

Resurrection Man

Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize Winner.

The Second Republic

part of the anthology Seven New Generation African Poets

Nick Makoha

Poetry

Kingdom of Gravity by Nick Makoha (Peepal Tree) is an electrifying debut poetry collection that skilfully resurrects the terror of Idi Amin’s dictatorship from this British writer who fled Uganda as a child. – Bernardine Evaristo

SELECTED ONLINE POEMS
  • Bad Lilies
  • Bad Lilies
  • Fly the Flag
  • Adda
  • Inn Crowd
  • Brittle Paper
  • New York Times Magazine
  • Poems on the Underground
  • One Throne Mag
  • Cordite Review
  • Cordite Review
  • And Other Poems
  • And Other Poems
  • Magma
  • Proletarian
  • Boots & Pantisocracies
  • Golden Shovel
  • Poetry Society
  • Prairie Schooner

Nick Makoha’s first collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was the 2017 debut which most excited me. Focused on Uganda during the Idi Amin dictatorship, his poetry is charged with ethical sensibility. The lines protest as they sing “the song disturbed by helicopter blades…” but they don’t simplify things: they explore, and complicate. Personal witness and artistry are one

Carol RumensThe Guardian