Episode 77
Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha

 

Nick Makoha reads ‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ and discusses the poem with Mark McGuinness.

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This poem is from:

The New Carthaginians

Available from:

The New Carthaginians is available from:

The publisher: Penguin

Amazon: UK | US

Bookshop.org: UK

 

Self Portrait¹of²
by Nick Makoha

If I’m going to sing like someone else,
then I don’t need to sing at all. – E. Faga

¹ 1981
That midsummer and the D’Angelo concert is sold out at Brixton. Fuck! I can’t tell you what he whispered to security but here’s a picture of Icarus and me backstage with two press cards pinned to our chests. And to think four hours ago I was clocking off work. They have only just let in the crowd. You can hear the hum through the tannoy. The thing about Icarus is he has a microchip for a mouth. You say it he

will name it. You name it he will play it. Once after his dad had died I caught him beating his chest after a month of fasting and prayer. They were more like songs really – the way the words fell away from his bones. Anyway, he is calling Keyon Harrold, the trumpet player from The Vanguard, ‘Kenya’. Asking him things like How do you create an open field in the band and if he believes in the equation of the Freedom Principle

even in light of the Palestine situation. D’Angelo has popped two cassettes into a deck. Icarus calls him Smoke. My bladder is about to cut loose. When I return, they are huddled around the tape deck like tribesmen eating jerk chicken, listening to a jamming session from the morning’s rehearsal in silence. Smoke must have taken the picture because he is the only one not in it. Icarus is in the centre with his wings fanning and closing.

² the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982

To forgive someone requires two incidents in your life. The most obvious is the incident that like fire must be redeemed by fire. Here’s the match. A young journalist is speaking to camera – but her eyes struggle to find the centre. She is talking about my country the way a wino pees Pepsi into a can. This is being broadcast round the world. Except for the countries she is in. Hmm! She’s using her diaphragm to say things outside the range of her common experience. We are what you talk about before you cut to the news desk for an update on the Olympics. The only part you will remember is that the Queen’s daughter

has qualified for the British riding team. And not that the body on the ground belonged to another body. And that he fought to stay alive the way the journalist fights with her mic or fights to beat the falling darkness or fights away a pair of mosquitoes that hover between her breast and right eye – hover between her lip and right breast. The cameraman has the engine running and is using the back of the pickup as a tripod while he rolls himself a smoke. Watch his lens searching for the sweetness of death. If only the dead could awaken. The lighter belongs to the body on the ground, so do the smokes, and

so does the country in which we watch him. The mosquitoes know this – that is why they are unhinged – and now so do you. The second point of forgiveness sits in the future like the woman I will one day love and the country in which I will one day live. Forgive me. My heart is a vicious wolf that moves like the cloud of God searching for
the true shape of history searching for the weight of a love lost. My mother was a river, my father was a boat – both separated by a sack of light

 

Interview transcript

Mark: Nick, where did this poem come from?

Nick: So this poem came from a series of poems that I was working on that – the term is called ekphrasis when you take a piece of art and you use poetic language not necessarily to describe the painting, but the connection between the painting and yourself and the artist. And the particular artist that I was looking at was Jean-Michel Basquiat and initially that wasn’t intentional. It’s just that I’d gone to see his work at the Boom for Real retrospective at the Barbican, and I was so moved by the work, I cried, I burst into tears. I’ve never done that before in public. Just seen a painting or a bunch of his paintings and burst into tears one after the other and literally weeping.

At the time I didn’t know what to make of it. I wasn’t trying to write any poem. I was literally just coming, I’d done a workshop with a friend of mine and I was just coming well, given free tickets and I was just observing the painting. I’d never seen a Basquiat painting before in person in my life, but when I started actually working on this collection that at the time wasn’t even called The New Carthaginians, it was called The Welcome Table, I knew I needed three characters, of which I would be one of them as the poet. I didn’t know that the second character would be Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the third character would be Icarus.

And what I wanted to do was what he does with paintings. He turns paintings into poetry, so I wanted to turn poetry into a painting. And so these there are actually two titles in the one title. So the first part of it is Self Portrait 1981, which is one of his paintings, and the second one is Self-portrait of the Poet as Cassius Clay, which is another painting. And what I wanted to do was the self-portrait of the Black body. So one of them is a Self portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay. One of them is this kind of self portrait, of course. But because they’re using Basquiat, they’re also, it’s also a portrait of him, if that makes sense. And that was what I was trying to achieve.

And they’re basically two poems that sit side by side with each other and they work as what I call a new form called the footnote poem. And so you read part one of the poem and then the story elevates to another register, and you read part two. So I didn’t think of this at the time. So it sounds very ‘Oh, you know what you’re doing’. I didn’t, I was just writing from just kind of this raw emotion.

And what I did before I wrote these poems is actually I’d been to the retrospective. But then I decided to go to another retrospective that was put on by his sisters in New York, and that was called King Pleasure. And so I had to go back to see the paintings again and other works. And I was again moved and then I had about 40 poems that I really liked. I mean, 40 paintings call them poems, but 40 paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat that I really liked. And then from those I would I would, I would just day by day write a poem. And then some of them connected as these two do. So I didn’t make them initially connect, but I saw parallels.

I thought, okay, what if I was to find a way to connect them in the way that Basquiat that he did these diptychs and triptychs. So diptychs and triptychs are moments in time. So a triptych is three scenes, one that represents the past, one that represents the present and one that represents the future. And so when you put them all together, the past, present and future, you have the time all of time happening at once. And one of the things I wanted to do was play with time. So technically there are two poems here, but when you put them together, there’s a third poem. So that is the past, the present and the future. Once again, I’m not as clever as it sounds! At the time I didn’t know what I was doing. These were just creative instincts that I was playing with.

And part of that, yeah, part of the problem was, and the reason I was playing with this is because I was, I was trying to tell a story. So this, The New Carthaginians is my life story.

I’m looking at my life story. I’m from Uganda originally, and with my first book I was looking at the Amin regime and I was trying to look at like the eight years or nine years of that regime. I wrote a play called The Dark, which looked at one day, which is the day that my mom smuggled me out of Uganda. And then for some reason, the curiosity was still there.

So I wanted to look at a specific seven days and there’s seven days of history in Uganda that’s called the Entebbe hijacking. And I wanted to parallel that with all the important moments of history in life, to look at the world through that, particularly the African lens but particularly the East African lens and more particularly the Ugandan.

So that’s what I was trying to achieve with the whole collection. And those three characters myself, the poet myself from Michel Basquiat, the painter and the Black Icarus, all live in present time. And I’m using them to move through time and how they talk about different histories to kind of understand my exile life here in the UK and also to give a voice to the East African voice, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So there’s a lot going on in this poem and also in the in the whole book. And, if you’re listening to this and feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now, that’s actually, I think, overwhelmed in a good way is part of the experience of this book. There’s so much richness with so many different perspectives and things going on. And so there’s a lot for us to unpack.

But before we do that, Nick, in terms of your poem, I’d like to go back to that experience when you first encountered the Basquiat painting face to face. Looking back, what do you think it was about those painting things that was so powerful for you?

Nick: I mean, there’s. I mean, there’s so many ways to answer why Basquiat’s paintings mean so much to me. I think I want to say this humbly. I think if I had known him, he would have been my friend. And I’m not saying that because he’s famous. It’s just the many things that I realized that he was into I was into when I went to the King Pleasure retrospective in New York, and I was looking through his collections, many of the books he read, I’d read, the music he was into, I was into.

And he kind of reminds me that he’s a collage of several of my friends in many ways. So I was like, you’d be the sort of guy, I’ll probably go check out a concert and eat some food, talk. I might not see him for a while because he’s famous, but it would be like that. I’m not saying, I’d see him every day I’m not trying to elevate myself to some kind of status, but he just seemed like a friend on some level.

That was one. I think the other thing I learned when I went travelling across America looking at Basquiat paintings across these different museums in New York and LA and Atlanta is I realized that the thing about Basquiat is that he centres the Black body in time in history. And that’s kind of what I was trying to achieve. So I realized the crying – he’d given me a codex or a key into how I could write these poems, because the struggle was, I mean, every poet has this. But I, particularly as a writer of colour, as a Black poet, as an African poet, you always question: How will they – will they even have interest in my story? How do I make it relevant to contemporary time? Because the story is not in the news. The stories that they have of my country are not the ones that I’m trying to tell.

So that was I think when I saw that it’s almost like I’d seen a pathway that would allow me to navigate my narrative in a way that was both interesting to the reader, but also interesting to me, to move the reader and move myself. Because if it doesn’t move me, there’s no point in me writing it. And if it doesn’t move the reader there’s no point me saying it, you know?

Mark: So one thing that struck me, Nick, looking at Basquiat’s – you picked up on the phrase ‘exploded collage’, I think, from one of his critics, to describe what he does, which is, when you look at those images, they are overwhelming. They mix images, they mix words, they have crossed out words. They have all kinds of interesting and playful stuff going on.

And I think your book is very much in that spirit. I mean, even in this poem that you’ve read today, for instance, as you said, you’ve got the three different characters, you’ve got the poet Basquiat and Icarus, who seem, at some stages in the book to be the same person, at some stages different people. You’ve also got that coming out formally, in the fact that you use footnotes extensively, so that there’s at least a two-level text going on, which is what happens with footnotes.

So again, if you’re listening to this and you want to see this, go and have a look at the website, you’ll see the poem and you’ll see which bits are footnotes and which bits are the ‘main text’, in inverted commas. On the one hand footnotes can seem a bit academic. But on the other hand, I think the way you’re using them is anything but. Could you say something about that formal decision?

Nick: The footnote is a device used in academic settings, but that’s not what I was trying to do. What I was trying to do is enter a level of surrealism. I was trying to signify another body or human experience. There is what is happening in the world. And then there’s what we’re experiencing, particularly as a Black body. You live an Afro-Surreal life in the sense that there’s the world that you are in. And then there’s the truth that I mean, for example, if you think about George Floyd, I had an Afro-Surreal experience when I saw what happened to him in the sense that I saw a Black man being killed for literally having $5 in his pocket and people not believing that. And so I have as a Black body, I have to think, Oh, my God. Should I not carry £5? Should I tell the truth?

So that surrealism means that there is a narrative that is happening in the world and then there’s a narrative I have to accept as a Black body. And so the footnote kind of allows two worlds to exist at once. And I wanted that parallel track, and I wanted it in a way that was more than just a series of poems, or these are connected poems. I wanted to play with time. I wanted to be able to move you into the future, but also feel that you’re in the present, but also feel like you’re in the past and feel, no disconnection with either one and feel no kind of disorientation. So that’s what the footnote poem did. But I also found that by accident, so that it was it was me trying to answer that that question was like, how do I bring all of this history together?

The other thing about Basquiat, what you said about the exploded collage is that he was trying to – he actually said in a quote, “I’m trying to put the whole of history onto one page”. And I mean, I have a sequence in the book called ‘Codex’, for example, and I was trying to do the same thing even before I’d met Basquiat. I’d actually gone to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Arundel at the British Library. And I had this idea in my head before, I’d actually even seen a Basquiat painting. And the idea was, I wondered if I could put the whole of my emotions, my history, my life, my, my loves into one poem. So I started these poems just called ‘Codex’.

And then I went, I guess, when I saw Basquiat, then I realized he was doing the same thing, that the tears were this kind of kinship. This way I say to you, he feels like a like a friend. Not because I’ve never met him, but there were so many things that we were trying to do the same. And I feel that he achieved them and he was kind of almost like a like a spirit guide in that kind of way. And that’s what I was trying to do. So when you feel you feel these poems, you’re moving through time, you’re moving through space, you’re moving through histories, you’re moving through bodies for understanding, for recognition, if that makes sense.

Mark: Yeah. And that chimes very much with my experience of reading this book. Because it is, really, it’s one long poem. It’s made up of several sequences, but it’s – sometimes you read a poetry collection and you read a poem and you read another poem, and it’s like there’s a space between them, and you can dip in and dip out. But I sat down and read this all the way through It was more like the feeling of reading a novel. You know, where you’re just totally absorbed in that world for the duration of the book. It’s got that level of intensity, but also capaciousness. Like you say, it includes a lot of history and culture, different time zones, lots of elements of your own life, but also the history of Uganda.

And if we can just zoom in on how that plays out in this particular poem, maybe we could just start to talk about the two parts of the poem and how they talk to each other. So on the one hand you’ve got this D’Angelo concert, Brixton – I assume this is the Brixton Academy?

Nick: Yeah.

Mark: Getting into the venue when it’s sold out. And that whole sequence with Icarus who on the one hand is a mythical creature, but somehow he’s right there in the photo with his wings. And then the second part is much more centred around the public reporting and portrayal of the Entebbe hijacking. So, I mean, how do you see the relationship between these two?

Nick: I mean, there are many doors in, but I’ll try and give you a few! So basically, Basquiat, Icarus and myself are the new Carthaginians. And there are two paintings by Turner that are called, well, there there are actually ten paintings from Turner that deal with Carthage. And the reason I’ve chosen Carthage is, going back to that episode where I told you why I burst into tears at looking at the Basquiat retrospective. In The Aeneid, Aeneas does the same thing when he looks at the frescoes on the Temple of Juno. He bursts into tears when he sees the whole of his history on the wall.

Mark: Oh yes.

Nick: So he’s seeing his life in the present, but he’s seeing what’s happened in the past, and he’s also seeing the future in the forming of Carthage. And so in many ways, through those three characters, the new Carthaginians and in my vision, Icarus is alive. He’s Black, but he didn’t die the way it’s depicted in myth. He has a different myth. So I’m also creating a new myth.

So that’s the context of these poems. One of them is dealing with, I’ve played with the timeline, but one of them is dealing with a concert I went to and trying to generate that. And that is kind of, I guess, relatively present time. But it’s also dealing with when I’m in these spaces and how the past of Uganda floods back in and how they sit parallel with each other. So it’s looking at how a lot of times the reportage or the way that my country’s reported on, the way it is seen through the Western gaze, and I’m holding it up to the light, trying to give it an African gaze.

And the reason I did that is, when we when they talk about the Entebbe hijacking, which is a horrible thing to happen in any in any situation, but whenever they talk of that situation, they never actually talk of the people of Uganda. So, if we parallel that to sadly, what happened at 9/11 or 7/7, when you think 9/11 they talk of the people of New York, it is their story. And we have compassion for that. When it was 7/7, they talk of the people of London and it is it is their story and we have compassion for that. But they never talk of the people of Uganda in that way. And so I just wanted to turn the camera, if that makes sense, so that they can see the people. So I am one of those people.

So even though I might be at the D’Angelo concert enjoying myself, and even though you might turn to the news and see something else, I’m one of those people. And I’m one of the people who I guess is here, but they are the people who will not be part of history because they’re not even looked at. That’s what the portrait is. It’s a way of centring that story rather than having it towards the periphery of the painting. And you said something that actually touches me. And it means in many ways – I mean, I hope the book goes on to do very well, but it’s one of my secret passions for the book was I wanted it to read, even more than a novel, like it’s one big mural. It’s one painting.

And when Basquiat was creating his work, a lot of times he would work on several paintings at once. And that’s how I worked on these poems. I was working on them as if it was one. I would go from one to the next to the next. When one idea fades, I’ll jump into another poem, one other, and I would keep that energy going. So it really means a lot that you feel the arc of the book.

Mark: Yeah. I mean, it’s an intense experience. I heartily recommend it, but you’ve really got to be able to sit down and give it the time and attention it deserves. So picking up on what you were just saying, it sounds like, in your use of the footnotes and multiple perspectives here, the background becomes the foreground. The people of Uganda, the lives, the cause. So the Entebbe hijacking, there’s a lot of movie versions aren’t there? And they usually centre on how it seems from the outside. So the original hijack was in Athens. Could you just walk us though that?

Nick: Yeah. So I mean, it’s really important what you’re saying there. So when, when you talk about the Entebbe hijacking there, that there are several components. It was a plane that left Tel Aviv, then went to Athens. That was it. And then it was supposed, I think I think was supposed to go to I don’t know if it was Paris or New York, one or the other. But anyway, some hijackers got on and then it was diverted to Benghazi. And then at Benghazi, they refuelled, they were allowed to refuel, and then they asked many African countries if they could land on the tarmac.

And the only country that was willing to accept that was Uganda, because Idi Amin was in charge at the time and the plane was there for seven days. Hence the seven-day focus that I’m looking at for many reasons. One is because of the way the world related to Idi Amin and Uganda changed after that and understandably so. But then what happened is, what is usually in the films, there was this great rescue by the Israeli Defence Force. Their leader, Yoni was killed and a few others were injured. Some of the hostages were killed. I think all the hostages were killed. Some civilians were killed.

And they always tell the story. But whenever they tell the story, the only real Black gaze is on Idi Amin and his villainy. But there’s nothing about how it impacted the people of Uganda. So my concern isn’t what people already know – the Western gaze, the Western reportage, the Western heroism. It’s more about: what about the people of Uganda? Even though it happened on Ugandan soil, there is no Ugandan story, which is which I wanted to deal with, that erasure. But not just that. I also wanted to deal with the impact. Because of that situation I had to leave the country. You know, there’s a part of me thinks that I might not have even been a poet if I hadn’t had to leave my country because I needed a language in which my whole self could be expressed.

Mark: Really?

Nick: You know, in poetry, I’m fully the person I need to be. Whereas in the world, when I step into the West, I’m a Black. I have to identify as a Black body and I’m usually an ‘other’. I’m usually a minority. When I go back to my country, I’m seen as if I’ve left. So I’m never fully myself. But in poetry land, inside of the new Carthaginians, my whole self is realised. And so this is a contemporary inquiry into exile, into that that fracture and into the banality and into that metic. When I say metic, it means, you know you’re a citizen, but you don’t feel fully integrated, not for any choice of your own, but in the way that the world receives you and perceives you.

Mark: So, the personal and the political, if you like, are nested one inside the other. There’s these two different perspectives or multiple perspectives, on the world stage but also in your life, you embody that.

Nick: Yes, absolutely. You say it better! Come with me. And we can explain this a lot easier! Yeah. [Laughter]

Mark: I don’t think I’m as articulate as you about this Nick! And so the hijacking was 1976. So how old would you have been then?

Nick: In 1976, I would have only been 2 at the time. I left in 1979. So thats when my mom, she was actually doing a PhD here and she had to come back and she smuggled me out and I’ve retold that as a play that happened that taught in the UK in 2019. But I wanted to not just look at that. That is like a focal point, but it isn’t the whole story. What I really wanted to look at was this enquiry into exile from an East African body. So I’m looking at my life and parallel history. So Basquiat’s history, Greece’s history, Carthage, and other moments in time. So I’m looking at them and seeing what is the impact of this on me in exile and through the different gaze of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Icarus and myself.

Mark: And so if the reader’s feeling disoriented on entering the world of the book, actually, that’s really mirroring your disorientation that you’re describing, that, you’ve been living through?

Nick: If they’re feeling disorientated, it means that they understand. If it’s clear to them, then it probably means that they’ve probably gone through some of the experiences I’m talking about.

Mark: Right.

Nick: But if they’re disorientated, that’s part of it. I think that’s part of the achievement of the book. And I hope I’ve done it in a way that doesn’t seem like you think, ‘Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s doing’. You think, ‘Oh’ – I’m I hope that when they’re going through the disorientation, you’re going through an understanding, of not just yourself, but also of me and not just me, but other people or other types of existence, you know?

Mark: I always felt I was in good hands in this book. I felt like you were taking me somewhere and you had an instinct for where that was, even if maybe, as you said, you hadn’t articulated it all consciously. There’s a real drive to the narrative to take us through.

And clearly there’s a lot of hurt in this experience. You know there’s a lot of hurt in the depiction of your country. There’s a lot of hurt in your own experience of exile and prejudice and being an outsider and so on. But, the second part hinges on forgiveness, doesn’t it? And you say , ‘To forgive someone requires two incidents in your life. The most obvious is the incident that, like fire, must be redeemed by fire.’. And that wonderful phrase, ‘Here’s the match.’. That’s the cue for the journalist and that’s the hurt. But towards the end, you come in with the second point of forgiveness. So I’m really curious about how that hinge of forgiveness works.

Nick: Yeah. I mean, it’s something I look at a lot, just on my own personal self-development, is this idea of forgiveness.

I mean, if you think about the first part of the poem which is dealing with war, but also the second one, which is dealing with relationship, forgiveness is the hardest thing to do. And I’m talking from a personal perspective. I’m not looking outward, I’m looking inward. And so I really want to inquire that. And, this is just my rudimentary thinking. You realize that forgiveness is a gift of God. And to be able to forgive someone is, is not only, a blessing on one level, but it’s also a release or a cleansing.

And I think in many ways that was my ambition for myself, is like I don’t want to just look at this and it be another book about exile. I wanted to kind of interrogate it with a sense of purpose to kind of, I guess, heal myself, bring myself closer to who I am. I have some deep understanding, but it would mean that I’d have to look at things that hurt me outwardly and inwardly, or ways in which I’ve hurt other people, outwardly and inwardly. And so I was trying to get as close to the fire of that as possible, no pun intended. But I was really trying to – I was like, in this idea of the codex, I was trying to put everything into one poem. I was like: could I confront myself and tell the truth for myself without trying to sugar-coat it? Could I confront my history without trying to be manipulative or sit, on one side?

And the only way I could enter into that authenticity was through this passage of forgiveness.

Mark: I think that’s a beautiful description. And it’s really hard to paraphrase this book or reduce it to a political position. You know, however much politics is in the air in it. And I think it comes across as a very human book, both in the experience you describe and the spirit that comes through it. Because after all the suffering, all the dislocation, whatever, it’s also a very beautiful book. And I would really encourage the reader to check out, to just sit down and read the whole book through and savour the beauty as well as the dislocation, the suffering and so on.

Nick: Thank you. Okay, so before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you. I’ve really enjoyed, I mean, I can’t wait to hear it back, but I’ve really enjoyed this and regardless of the technical difficulties, that was a beautiful interview. Thank you.

Mark: Well, thank you, Nick. And yes, behind the scenes you’re listening to the cleaned up edited version. But we did have some technical challenges and Nick was super patient with that. So let’s hear the poem again and appreciate the multifaceted world of Nick’s poetry.

 

Self Portrait¹of²
by Nick Makoha

If I’m going to sing like someone else,
then I don’t need to sing at all. – E. Faga

¹ 1981
That midsummer and the D’Angelo concert is sold out at Brixton. Fuck! I can’t tell you what he whispered to security but here’s a picture of Icarus and me backstage with two press cards pinned to our chests. And to think four hours ago I was clocking off work. They have only just let in the crowd. You can hear the hum through the tannoy. The thing about Icarus is he has a microchip for a mouth. You say it he

will name it. You name it he will play it. Once after his dad had died I caught him beating his chest after a month of fasting and prayer. They were more like songs really – the way the words fell away from his bones. Anyway, he is calling Keyon Harrold, the trumpet player from The Vanguard, ‘Kenya’. Asking him things like How do you create an open field in the band and if he believes in the equation of the Freedom Principle

even in light of the Palestine situation. D’Angelo has popped two cassettes into a deck. Icarus calls him Smoke. My bladder is about to cut loose. When I return, they are huddled around the tape deck like tribesmen eating jerk chicken, listening to a jamming session from the morning’s rehearsal in silence. Smoke must have taken the picture because he is the only one not in it. Icarus is in the centre with his wings fanning and closing.

² the Poet as Cassius Clay 1982

To forgive someone requires two incidents in your life. The most obvious is the incident that like fire must be redeemed by fire. Here’s the match. A young journalist is speaking to camera – but her eyes struggle to find the centre. She is talking about my country the way a wino pees Pepsi into a can. This is being broadcast round the world. Except for the countries she is in. Hmm! She’s using her diaphragm to say things outside the range of her common experience. We are what you talk about before you cut to the news desk for an update on the Olympics. The only part you will remember is that the Queen’s daughter

has qualified for the British riding team. And not that the body on the ground belonged to another body. And that he fought to stay alive the way the journalist fights with her mic or fights to beat the falling darkness or fights away a pair of mosquitoes that hover between her breast and right eye – hover between her lip and right breast. The cameraman has the engine running and is using the back of the pickup as a tripod while he rolls himself a smoke. Watch his lens searching for the sweetness of death. If only the dead could awaken. The lighter belongs to the body on the ground, so do the smokes, and

so does the country in which we watch him. The mosquitoes know this – that is why they are unhinged – and now so do you. The second point of forgiveness sits in the future like the woman I will one day love and the country in which I will one day live. Forgive me. My heart is a vicious wolf that moves like the cloud of God searching for
the true shape of history searching for the weight of a love lost. My mother was a river, my father was a boat – both separated by a sack of light

 

The New Carthaginians

‘Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982’ is from The New Carthaginians  by Nick Makoha, published by Penguin.

Available from:

The New Carthaginians is available from:

The publisher: Penguin

Amazon: UK | US

Bookshop.org: UK

 

 

Nick Makoha

Dr Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet, winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. He was the ICA 2023 Writer-in-Residence. He was the 2019 Writer-in-Residence for The Wordsworth Trust and Wasafiri. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works alumnus. He won the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection Man. The New Carthaginians is his latest collection, published in 2025.

NickMakoha.com

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A Mouthful of Air – the podcast

This is a transcript of an episode of A Mouthful of Air – a poetry podcast hosted by Mark McGuinness. New episodes are released every other Tuesday.

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The music and soundscapes for the show are created by Javier Weyler. Sound production is by Breaking Waves and visual identity by Irene Hoffman.

A Mouthful of Air is produced by The 21st Century Creative, with support from Arts Council England via a National Lottery Project Grant.



























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The post Self Portrait 1981 Self Portrait of the poet as Cassius Clay 1982 by Nick Makoha appeared first on A Mouthful of Air.