Nick Makoha – författare

A new live literature experience by award-winning poet Nick Makoha.On a November evening in 1978 after eight years of civil war, Nick Makoha and his mother fled their homeland of Uganda. Many people were displaced, thrown into unfamiliar environments and forced to find their new home in the world.The Dark is Nick’s own poetic retelling of his experience and that of others affected by it - a series of voices echoing from varying states of darkness. What unfolds is a story of those who find themselves exiled, with allegiances split between their birthplace and their new country.

A new live literature experience by award-winning poet Nick Makoha.On a November evening in 1978 after eight years of civil war, Nick Makoha and his mother fled their homeland of Uganda. Many people were displaced, thrown into unfamiliar environments and forced to find their new home in the world.The Dark is Nick''s own poetic retelling of his experience and that of others affected by it - a series of voices echoing from varying states of darkness. What unfolds is a story of those who find themselves exiled, with allegiances split between their birthplace and their new country.

A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE TS ELIOT PRIZE 2025'© Codex' SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST SINGLE POEMAn expansive new collection from one of the UK’s most daring and celebrated poetsIn The New Carthaginians, time – and with it the world – is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that will lead to Idi Amin’s Uganda becoming a pariah state and, within a few years, to the young Nick Makoha’s flight from the country. A mysterious writer daubs poetic slogans on the walls of late-’70s New York City, signing them SAMO©. Three characters who are also one – the Poet, a Black Icarus and a resurrected Jean-Michel Basquiat – journey through a time that is both our own and not, watching TV, discussing art and literature and tucking their wings into their jackets on the way to airport security.Concerned throughout with flight and falling, the sample and the loop, The New Carthaginians is a poetry collection of staggering originality: a work by an author at the height of his powers, in which the familiar Western canons of art, history and philosophy are prised apart and reassembled in a new configuration. Drawing on Basquiat’s technique of the ‘exploded’ collage, our heroes’ odyssey gathers the symbols of a new mythos, through which the othering of Black life might be undone and the stage set for some fresh emergence, some transfigured understanding of myth and life. ‘Hold that note,’ writes the poet. ‘In this place you are no longer the chorus … In any future, remember you are a New Carthaginian.’A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOK OF POETRY 2025‘In this book, Nick Makoha has found an otherworldly, visionary voice and diction that arrest you from the first page and never let you go.’ Jason Allen-Paisant, Winner of the TS Eliot Prize

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TS ELIOT PRIZE 2025SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2026'© Codex' SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST SINGLE POEMLONGLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE 2026'Profound, sheer originality... a tantalising jigsaw puzzle of a book' Tristram Fane-Saunders, TelegraphIn The New Carthaginians, time – and with it the world – is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that will lead to Idi Amin’s Uganda becoming a pariah state and, within a few years, to the young Nick Makoha’s flight from the country. A mysterious writer daubs poetic slogans on the walls of late-’70s New York City, signing them SAMO©. Three characters who are also one – the Poet, a Black Icarus and a resurrected Jean-Michel Basquiat – journey through a time that is both our own and not, watching TV, discussing art and literature and tucking their wings into their jackets on the way to airport security.Concerned throughout with flight and falling, the sample and the loop, The New Carthaginians is a poetry collection of staggering originality: a work by an author at the height of his powers, in which the familiar Western canons of art, history and philosophy are prised apart and reassembled in a new configuration. Drawing on Basquiat’s technique of the ‘exploded’ collage, our heroes’ odyssey gathers the symbols of a new mythos, through which the othering of Black life might be undone and the stage set for some fresh emergence, some transfigured understanding of myth and life. ‘Hold that note,’ writes the poet. ‘In this place you are no longer the chorus … In any future, remember you are a New Carthaginian.’A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOK OF POETRY 2025‘In this book, Nick Makoha has found an otherworldly, visionary voice and diction that arrest you from the first page and never let you go.’ Jason Allen-Paisant, Winner of the TS Eliot Prize

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TS ELIOT PRIZE 2025SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2026'© Codex' SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST SINGLE POEMLONGLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE 2026'Profound, sheer originality... a tantalising jigsaw puzzle of a book' Tristram Fane-Saunders, TelegraphIn The New Carthaginians, time – and with it the world – is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that will lead to Idi Amin’s Uganda becoming a pariah state and, within a few years, to the young Nick Makoha’s flight from the country. A mysterious writer daubs poetic slogans on the walls of late-’70s New York City, signing them SAMO©. Three characters who are also one – the Poet, a Black Icarus and a resurrected Jean-Michel Basquiat – journey through a time that is both our own and not, watching TV, discussing art and literature and tucking their wings into their jackets on the way to airport security.Concerned throughout with flight and falling, the sample and the loop, The New Carthaginians is a poetry collection of staggering originality: a work by an author at the height of his powers, in which the familiar Western canons of art, history and philosophy are prised apart and reassembled in a new configuration. Drawing on Basquiat’s technique of the ‘exploded’ collage, our heroes’ odyssey gathers the symbols of a new mythos, through which the othering of Black life might be undone and the stage set for some fresh emergence, some transfigured understanding of myth and life. ‘Hold that note,’ writes the poet. ‘In this place you are no longer the chorus … In any future, remember you are a New Carthaginian.’A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOK OF POETRY 2025‘In this book, Nick Makoha has found an otherworldly, visionary voice and diction that arrest you from the first page and never let you go.’ Jason Allen-Paisant, Winner of the TS Eliot Prize

A debut poetry publication.

'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.