SAMIZDAT!

Samizdat is the Russian dissident practice of underground publishing, without which so much great literature would have been lost.

Samizdat Press is the commercial publishing imprint of Abuja-based poetry collective and publishing house Konya Shamsrumi.

We aim to promote the best African writing through our print and digital options.

BOOKS

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The Script of Bruises

Funmi Gaji

The Script of Bruises uses third world consciousness as a backdrop to explore gender relations, identity, the politics of space and masculinity. It is about identity and identifying.

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The Other Names of Grief

Rasaq Malik Gbolahan

In this chapbook, the poet explores the problems in his society and creates pictures of what it looks like to be a Nigerian, of what it means to wake up daily and realize the fact that there are unrecorded pains and deaths everywhere.

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The Anguish and Vigilance of Things

Richard Ali

The Anguish and Vigilance of Things is Richard Ali’s long awaited debut. The collection deals with a range of ideas and issues, playing with form and structure. At the centre of them all is the image of a poet in a penultimate space, at an angle to the stairs of this world in the sense of James Baldwin.

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The Poet of Dust

Umar Abubakar Sidi

"On one level, Umar Sidi sees himself as a poet of dust in that, he is the one that takes a basic ingredient of creation and adds it to another element to create a work of art. On another level, we can say that Sidi is on a quest to understand the true nature of poetry, but he will never understand it because good poetry is like dust, impermanent and non-solid, a symbol of emptiness and desolation."

“I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself.”

Vladimir K. Bukovsky (1942)

OUR PUBLISHING PROCESS

Our PublishingProcess

Step 1
Your manuscript is ready. Are you worthy?

The first step in the publishing process is to request a quotation. You can submit the form here by answering a few questions and uploading five to seven representative poems from the collection.
Step 2
Right-fitting your manuscript. Prove your fire!

Our editors will assess the submission and provide you a short report on your work. The report might include a rejection notice, or a conditional acceptance.
2021Step 3
Publishing Schedule. Now we can start. . .

Based on the previous step, publishing costs, as well as formats, and timeline, will be agreed upon. Depending on the manuscript, an editor may be assigned to lead the project.
Step 4
Dealing with the Printer's Devil. Run the presses!!

A galley proof PDF will be generated and, upon your sign off, a print run (or publishing date for digital editions) will be agreed finalized.
Step 5
Smell the ink. . . and you are Bukovsky!

Your book is published; now we wait for the Police. . . and other consumers of dissident poetry. Congratulations!

Would you like to publish with us?

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

CHARLES BUKOWSKI.