INKSPIREDNG, a chapbook publishing outfit administered by leading Nigerian literary promoter and poet, Jide Badmus, is set to publish the debut chapbook by Award–winning Kenyan poet, Frank Njugi.
Titled Ujana, the Swahili translation of the english word, Youth, the chapbook captures the zeitgeist of Nairobi and East Africa, with the poems in it presented as urgent and important portraits of what it feels like to be a young artist in the region at this current age.
In her blurb for the book, Kenyan Poet, Naomi Waweru, terms it as “ a chapbook that does the necessary work of placing the reader at the exact center of each unfolding event. A lyrical brilliance and memorable read. This is the chapbook to give the man asking for a map of your city, and trust that they will find their way – in the intricacies of the people, the places, the habits, the mannerisms, the sounds and songs, the lingo and the objects placed in each of the poems.”
Tanzanian poet, Mariam Hassan, describes it as ‘ a chapbook in which Frank Njugi positions himself as a custodian of renegades, and creates a tantric dance between the loneliness of youth, memory and history. The poet uses silky vocabulary that breaks down the walls of language, and merges the raucous worlds of love, existentialism, and the mystic. Here is a voice that booms ruefully from the shadows of a tenacious city and declares ‘…in a country you are either cuticle or seamlessness; & you can’t be true to two…’ which sets the tone for Ujana. “
Frank Njugi is a self-taught Poet, Writer, Culture Journalist and Critic. Some of his accolades include being a Pushcart Prize Nominee 2023, being named runners-up in the 2023 International Literary Seminar – Fence Fellowship seminar and appearing in the Longlist of the inaugural Akachi Chukwuemeka prize for literature. In early 2024, he was among the recipients of the inaugural Sevhage-Agema Founder’s Prize. An alumni of the Nairobi Writing Academy, he currently serves as the East African correspondent for Los Angeles and Lagos based African and Black Media Publication, Afrocritik.
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