Chingonyi joins Bloomsbury to oversee publisher's first poetry list

Kayo Chingonyi is joining Bloomsbury as editor to oversee the publisher's first poetry list, with its inaugural collection coming in April 2022, followed by three further titles.

In its first year, Bloomsbury Poetry will release the "heartrending reckonings" of Valzhyna Mort, the "lyrical genius" of Polarbear, the jazz-inflected grief sonnets of Anthony Joseph and the "transformative reflections" of Selina Nwulu in print, e-book and audio editions.

The titles are billed as representing the best of contemporary poetry "with a list that emboldens innovative, dynamic poets from across the full breadth of Anglophone poetic practice, and poetry in translation, under the editorship of one of the most exciting and celebrated poets at work today".

Chingonyi is a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize winner and was associate poet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 2015. His first full-length collection, Kumukanda (Chatto), won the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. He was a Burgess Fellow at the Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, before joining Durham University as assistant professor of creative writing.

He is also is a writer and presenter for the music and culture podcast "Decode" on Spotify. His most recent collection, A Blood Condition (Chatto & Windus), is shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. 

Chingonyi said of the new list: "There are as many types of poetry as there are types of reader and this list is in service of that idea – that poetry is an expansive and capacious art form. As an editor I work in service of each poem, each group of poems, and I’m honoured to be helping bring these poems, bold, expansive, and beautiful as they are, to readers.

"I’m delighted to be working with a world-class team at Bloomsbury in ensuring the work of these visionary poets is presented with the grace it demands, a task to which Bloomsbury have proved themselves more than equal. What a time to be alive."

Music for the Dead and Resurrected, Mort's first collection to be published in the UK, grapples with the complexity of living in the shadows of imperial forces, of speaking through familial trauma with a grotesque, humorous voice, and of "seeing with more than one’s eyes". It will be released in April 2022.

The second publication, Joseph's Sonnets For Albert, explores the impact of being the son of an absent, or mostly absent, father in poems that, "though they threaten to break under the weight of their emotions, are always masterfully poised as the charismatic man they depict". The work, out in June 2022, is the poet's first collection since 2013.

Formerly a Young People’s Laureate for London, Nwulu’s work was featured in the acclaimed New Daughters of Africa anthology (Myriad Editions). A Little Resurrection, released in October 2022, is her debut full-length collection. It is "the work of a questing sensibility that explores seldom-seen corners of Black British life", with Nwulu’s own experiences as a poet of Nigerian descent raised in Yorkshire and time spent living in Senegal informing the poetry.

Polarbear is described by the publisher as "one of the most influential poets of his generation". Out in November 2022, The Lost Chronicle: 2005-2008 features poems in print for the first time, works which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views online and been performed all over the globe.

Alexis Kirschbaum, associate publisher, said: "Every major literary publishing house should have a poetry list and we have chosen this moment to launch Bloomsbury’s with the most extraordinary editor we could hope for, Kayo Chingonyi. A celebrated poet himself, he has exceptional taste and an ability to attract the most exciting poets writing today. The poets Kayo has selected to launch this list represent the best of contemporary poetry and they also give our list a character unlike any other list in the UK. It will be our mission to bring their lyric brilliance to the centre of culture."