‘Kumukanda’ by Kayo Chingonyi
Kumukanda is Kayo Chingonyi’s debut poetry collection; kumukanda is the name of the tribal rites of passage that Zambian boys of the Luvale people undertake before they are considered me. Chingonyi moved to the UK aged 6 and, therefore, never undertook them. Kumakanda is the poetic re-telling of different types of rites of passage that he did undergo. They are about rap music and school and cricket, in their loosest forms; these are poems about social tests and testing and finding a place in the world.
Chingonyi talks about being a black actor and hating the casting calls for ‘lean dark men who may have guns’ whilst he’s carry around a rucksack containing notebooks full of poetry and ‘headphones / that know Prokofiev as well as Prince Paul’. Eminem becomes a counterpoint for black and ethnic minority poets proving their place in lyric verse (it was when I read the poem about Eminem that I realised that Chingonyi and I must be about the same age because wow do I remember the days when Radio 1 seemed to play Eminem every single minute of the day). These poems are steeped in music - Chingonyi collected cassette tapes, writing in the collections about which ones of his mother’s he could take to record over, and practiced rap lyrics, and the poems leap off the page with their musicality. I am 100% certain I missed 90% of the references; I listen to a lot of music, but very little rap music. But that doesn’t matter. I didn’t need to understand the references completely to understand their importance.
A lot of the poems are also about death and grieving and the changes that happen when parents die. Chingonyi was six when his father died, precipitating the move to the UK, and then thirteen when his mother died. The poem from which the collection takes its title asks what his alter-self, the one who didn’t leave Zambia, whose father didn’t die, would make of the one who did. Kumukanda is not just the set of actions and tests that make someone an adult, but the fledging process of becoming an adult, learning from the world, and making a place in it.
