JACK MAPANJE

Malawian Jack Mapanje is unequivocally the most famous writer from Malawi, especially after garnering international focus whilst incarcerated by his government in the 80s. References to him by writers, academics and researchers all over the world at the time drew attention to his plight.

Jack Mapanje taught in Malawi Secondary Schools before he joined the Department of English at Chancellor College, University of Malawi, in 1975, first as a lecturer, then as Head of the Department of English.

He has a BA and Diploma in Education from the University of Malawi, an M.Phil. in English and Education from The Institute of Education London, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from University College London in 1983. 

His first collection of poems, Of Chameleons and Gods, was published in the UK in 1981 and withdrawn from bookshops, libraries and all instutitions of learning in Malawi in June 1985. 

He was imprisoned without trial or charge by the Malawian government in 1987, and although many writers, linguists and human rights activists, including Harold Pinter and Wole Soyinka, Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky and others campaigned for his release, he was not freed until 1991. 

The poems in The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993) were composed while he was imprisoned, as well as most of his third collection of poetry, Skipping without Ropes (1998).  

He has edited with introduction Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (2002), based on a degree course he taught at the Unviersity of Leeds, 1993-96, and has also selected and edited with introduction the poetry of David Rabadiri, An African Thunderstorm & Other Poems (2004).

Jack Mapanje lived in York, teaching Creative Writing and Literatures of Incarceration in the School of English, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His book, The Last of the Sweet Bananas: New & Selected Poems was published in 2004, and also his poetry collection, Beasts of Nalunga (2007).

Studies:

The context and language of Jack Mapanje's Poetry by Francis Moto 

Of chameleons and paramount chiefs : the case of the Malawian poet
Jack Mapanje by Leroy Vail 

Jack Mapanje detained in Malawi