The Macondo Book Society (Kenya) and Literature Live! (India) have announced the four poets selected for the 2026 Turkana Nature Poetry Retreat, scheduled for May 2026 at the Turkana Basin Institute’s Turkwel Campus in Northern Kenya. Frank Njugi and Evalyn Wanjiru Githina from Kenya, and Amulya Bhat and Mesak Takhelmayum from India, were chosen from a pool of 162 applicants. The cohort will spend eight days immersed in the Turkana Basin, widely regarded as the Cradle of Humankind, guided by TBI researchers working at the frontiers of human prehistory and biological evolution, before returning to Nairobi for a public showcase on 23 May.

The retreat grows out of a conversation at the 4th Macondo Literary Festival, where Indian novelist Shubhangi Swarup and Kenyan entomologist Dr. Dino Martins explored the relationship between scientific and literary ways of knowing. For Macondo co-founder Anja Bengelstorff, that exchange crystallised a central conviction: “Science and poetry, far from being opposed, are both languages of wonder, each capable of revealing something essential about the world we live in.” The programme invites poets to test that conviction in one of the most storied landscapes on Earth.

Now in its second year following a successful inaugural edition with the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, the retreat has expanded its international reach by partnering with Literature Live!, the organisation behind the Mumbai LitFest, now in its sixteenth year. Co-Director Quasar Thakore Padamsee sees the collaboration as a response to a planetary imperative. “This is the only planet we’ve got,” he says. “Poetry has the ability to capture the sublime, the unsaid, and talk about it with nuance — something greatly lacking in our everyday discourse.”

Padamsee also frames the India-Kenya pairing as a deliberate act of creative diplomacy. “Art and imagination is not governed by geographical boundaries,” he says. “Cross-cultural partnerships allow writers to transcend their own experiences and literary canons — and enable audiences to experience different narratives they would otherwise not have had access to.” The four poets were selected by a jury comprising Bengelstorff, poet Ngwatilo Mawiyoo, publisher Reena Agrawal, and novelist Shubhangi Swarup.

Following the residency, the poets will present their work at a public showcase in Nairobi, hosted by the Macondo Book Society and open especially to poets who work at the intersection of nature, science, and history.