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Jack Mapanje (1944–2026)

Jack Mapanje
1944 – 2026

We were very sad to hear that the poet Jack Mapanje has passed away.  He was a terrific poet, a great person, living in the UK in exile from his homeland of Malawi since arriving here in 1991 for the medical treatment he needed when he was released from incarceration in a notorious Malawian prison – unjustly incarcerated in 1987 for his poetry and released only due to the resounding global clamour of international voices.  The BBC Sounds programme Witness History: The Arrest of Jack Majanje on 20 July 2012, 25 years after his imprisonment without trial, interviews the poet about his experience and what happened, at this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p00vj1xs

Banipal Magazine always looked for ways to involve a range of poets in different languages, including of course Arabic with translations into English. We were elated when World Poetry Day was established by the UN, to take place every 21st March, an equinox day. For the second World Poetry Day in 2002,  we joined the Dialogue through Poetry Week, which was a global poetry project for the week of World Poetry Day with events taking place in the UK, Russia, Romania, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zewaland, India, France, Australia, Mexico, Slovakia and many more.  On 24 March 2002 Banipal organised with the poet Sarah Magure, who was poet-in-residence at SOAS, a major poetry event at the then-Brunei Gallery, SOAS. Jack Mapanje from Malawi joined poets from Labanon, Morocco, Norway, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, China and Pakistan. He was then poet-in-residence at Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in Cumbria, and he told the SOAS audience how he liked to write about “small people, those who have no power”.  Since then I have been captivated by his work.

The image shows a page from Banipal 13 – Jordanian literature
(Spring 2002) featuring photos of all the poets at the World Poetry Day event.  

 In 2012, when London hosted the Olympic Games, Jack Mapanje participated in Poetry Parnassus, a special World Poetry week, 25 June – 1 july 2012,  at London’s South Bank Centre, which brought poets from every country, and more, who were partiricaping in the Olympics.

Bloodaxe Books, Jack Mapanje’s UK publisher, has an comprenehsive webpage about him, which includes video of Jack Mapanje reading three prison poems, from the Bloodaxe DVD anthology In Person: World Poets. Also, the Bloodaxe webpage gives a link to an interview with Jack Mapanje on BBC Radio 4’s Pick of the Week, 17 May 2026, one earlier on 20 April 2024, and earlier still on BBC World Service, 25 July 2016. See all these links and more at https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/news?articleid=1650