Reclaiming Languages: Kano’s poets gather for KAPFEST 3.0

For three days, 15 to 17 October, Kano became a meeting point for poets who write in English, Hausa and a dozen other tongues. The third Kano International Poetry Festival (KAPFEST 3.0) ran under the theme “Reclaiming Languages” at Gidan Dan Hausa and the Amani Event Center, and it brought together some of the most closely watched names in contemporary Nigerian poetry: Tares Oburumu, Richard Ali, Ismail Bala and Umar Abubakar Sidi, Aduke Gomez, Salamatu Sule,Abdulkareem Buba Aminu, among the central guests.

A festival with a lineage

KAPFEST is the flagship event of the Poetic Wednesdays Initiative, which turned ten this year. At its anniversary pop-up at Alliance Française, Kano, in June, founder Salim Yunusa read out the organisation’s tally: ten thousand books distributed free across seven northern states, three literary publications, eighty workshops and two earlier editions of the festival.

The festival’s story is also a story of mentorship. JAY Lit’s profile of the initiative notes that Bala, Sidi and Ali directly mentored some of Poetic Wednesdays’ founders, and that Bala was the link for a joint Kano reading of Sidi’s The Poet of Dust. The guest list at KAPFEST 3.0 therefore reads less like a roster of headliners and more like a family gathering of teachers and the people they taught.

The first edition, in 2024, was a three-day affair built around twin workshops, one in English poetry led by Bala and Dr Ola Ifatimehin, the other in Hausa poetry, plus the Mudi Sipikin Poetry Slam. The second, “Poetry in a Time of Crisis”, followed in September 2025 and drew the Emir of Kano, Sunusi Lamido Sunusi II, among its notable attendees.

The guests

Tares Oburumu is a poet, essayist and playwright. He was shortlisted for the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature. He also won the 2022 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry for origins of the syma species, and he is also a GAP Poetry Prize winner and two-time Pushcart nominee. Ismail Bala, a poet, translator and critic who teaches at Bayero University, Kano, selected three of Oburumu’s poems for his Bala Selection series on Konya Shamsrumi earlier this year, which gives the pairing in Kano a documented editorial history.

Richard Ali and Umar Abubakar Sidi are both founding members of Konya Shamsrumi, and Sidi’s The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus has been a fixture of the Kano circuit since the first edition.

Writer’s note: the festival also had impressive books on their exhibition stands with RovingHeights and OpenWednesdays showcasing books by new and emerging Nigerian Poets

What the programme offered

The festival opened on Thursday 15 October with a full day of classes and workshops. Across the three days there were masterclasses (Vamba Sherif led creative writing), panels, book chats on languages, translation and creative writing, open mics for emerging and established poets, and the Mudi Sipikin Poetry Slam with a ₦1 million prize pool. Poet, performer and architect Bash Amuneni headlined, and Prof. Ibrahim Malumfashi received the KAPFEST26 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Two features ran for all three days: an exhibition by artists including Qalb Salim, Rebi Hueman, Fatima Goni Usman and Umar Farouq, and a poetry archive, the successor to last year’s “Poetry Dispensary”, that gathers poems in as many languages as possible. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, the opening-day showcase included traditional music and presentations in Hausa, Igala, Yoruba and Igbo on cultural practices and the importance of preserving identity.

Virtual Guests

Virtual Guests that featured prominently were Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Rasak Malik Gbolahan, Adedayo Agarau, Professor Dul Johnson, Namson Udosen, Sueddie Agema, Eriata Oribhabo, Carmen McCain

Why the theme matters

“Reclaiming Languages” sits uneasily and productively beside a guest list that includes poets whose published work is in English. That tension is not accidental. From its first edition the festival has set English and Hausa poetry side by side, and the 2026 theme asks what it means to write across languages when conflict, displacement and economic strain are reshaping who speaks what, and where.

Who pays

KAPFEST 3.0 was supported by the Open Society Foundations, now in its second year as sponsor. It may also be supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands, with partners including the Kano State History and Culture Bureau, Open Arts, Third Space, CITAD, Bridge Connect Africa Initiative and the National Gallery of Arts. That mix of foreign donors and state cultural bodies is common among northern literary festivals, and it raises the question every organiser eventually faces: how does a festival of this quality become less dependent on a few funders?