Call for Poets- Macondo Literary Festival

Job Description

Macondo Literary Festival (Kenya) and Literature Live! (India) invite Kenyan and Indian
poets to apply for a writing stay at the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI) in Kenya.

For the second time, after our inaugural retreat in April 2025, we welcome poets who put
the non-human world (plants, animals, oceans, mountains) in all its forms at the centre of
their artistic approach to work on expanding their poetic perspectives. You will have the
opportunity to engage with TBI researchers and their selections, join them on excursions,
but also get time to reflect, to write and to get your breath taken away by the beauty of
Turkana.

The poets selected – two from Kenya, two from India – will explore a unique natural
environment to support and encourage their writing and engagement with more-than-
human ecology. Guided by a Kenyan poetry practitioner, these explorations will be blended
with writing sessions, for individuals or in groups. At the end of the week-long stay, the

Northern Kenya’s Turkana region is famously referred to by anthropologists as the “cradle
of humankind.” Although many research projects facilitated by TBI are focused on human
prehistory and biological evolution, this has expanded to include areas of sustainability,
climate change, and modern human culture and diversity.