Panya Banjoko is fearless – and one of the most integral regional voices in UK poetry. Based in Nottingham, Panya has worked tirelessly for Black representation and racial equality across the city’s cultural sectors. Her second collection (Re)framing the Archive delves into the work produced as founder of Nottingham Black Archive. It centres black history, and experience of museum visits, peppered with personal tales that Panya blends together so well.

‘Panya Banjoko’s latest collection is keenly awaited by those of us who know, and understand the importance, of her work. If Some Things sought high ground from which to look down on those who continue to build their institutions on the backs of others, then (RE)Framing the Archive, digs deep to undermine their foundations. I know of know other poet who combines activism and archive the way that she does, or manages to hold on to the hope of peace through equality – despite the evidence’.       

Henderson Mullin,
Chief Executive, Writing East Midlands

(Re)framing the Archive – In-Person Launch:

2nd July, New Art Exchange Nottingham

Panya Banjoko is a UK based writer, poet and a PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University with a Vice Chancellor awarded scholarship writing a practice-led PhD rooted in Nottingham Black Archive. Her debut collection, Some Things, was published by Burning Eye Books (2018). Her work is published in numerous anthologies including award-winning Clever Girls, winner of the Working-Class Studies Association’s ‘Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey Award for a Book about the Working-Class Academic Experience’ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), and her poem, ‘They and Them’, featured in Mic Drop, an exhibition by artist Keith Piper at the Beaconsfield Gallery in London, the London Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She has been artist in residence at the International School in Stuttgart, Jaipur Literature Festival in India, and for the National Justice Museum in Nottingham. Panya is a multi-awardwinning poet, co-ordinates a Black Writers Network and is patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature

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