Panya Banjoko is an award-winning poet and activist from Nottingham. Her new collection Some Things is now available to buy from her directly and our web store.

Panya is an international poet, has toured worldwide, coordinates a writers’ and artists’ network and is patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. Her work has featured in numerous anthologies including the award-winning Dawn of the Unread  series published by LeftLion magazine in 2016. In 2017 her poem ‘One of a Kind’ was commended in the Writing East Midlands Aurora poetry competition and her poem ‘They and Them’ was featured in an exhibition by artist, academic and critic Keith Piper at the Beaconsfield Gallery, London.

She received the Women in the Arts Poetry Award for Outstanding Achievement in 2008 and the Black Achievers Culture, Music and Arts Award for her work as a poet in 2017.

 

An adversary of oppression and discrimination worldwide and a critic of the current political landscape, Banjoko speaks candidly in this collection about the world we live in, highlighting the many different roles of those who hold power and how they use it. Her poems consider the view of the voiceless and the contrasts within the various modes of discourse. Despite the often bleak images portrayed, there is a belief that the good will eventually out the bad without sullying their hands.

As one of the first generation of Caribbean immigrants to be born in Britain, her work not only reflects the uneasy interactions between immigrants and the dominant culture but is also heavily influenced by being an outsider. Despite the gloom of injustice there is the hope of redemption and the quest for truth, equality and peace continues.