Panya Banjoko is a writer and PhD student at Nottingham Trent University. Her first collection of poetry, Some Things, was published by Burning Eye Books (2018). Her poems feature in anthologies including award-winning Dawn of the Unread published by LeftLion magazine (2016). Panya is patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, co-ordinates a Writers’ Network and is a multi-award winning poet.
Her chosen poem is ‘Ordinary Morning’ by Jamaican dub poet Jean Binta Breeze (born 1957). Panya chose this poem, which is written in Jamaican patois, because it was in the first poetry collection she ever bought (in 1994) and “the poem just resonated with me because at the time I was a young mum…it’s just the daily humdrum that women with children go through and how that routine brings about reflection and…you think ‘Is this it?’ ”
Acknowledgement: Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Third World Girl: Selected Poems, with Live DVD (Bloodaxe Books, 2011). With kind permission of the author and RenaissanceOne