Described by African scholar and literary critic Chielozona Eze as "one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first century," Patricia Jabbeh Wesley composed When the Wanderers Come Home during a four-month visit to her homeland of Liberia in 2013. She gives powerful voice to the pain and inner turmoil of a homeland still reconciling itself in the aftermath of multiple wars and destruction.
Wesley, a native Liberian, calls on deeply rooted African motifs and proverbs, utilizing the poetics of both the West and Africa to convey her grief. Autobiographical in...
Described by African scholar and literary critic Chielozona Eze as "one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first century," Patricia Jabb...
Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana's most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor's most arresting work spanning almost fifty years. Selected and edited by Awoonor's friend and colleague Kofi Anyidoho, himself a prominent poet and academic in Ghana, The Promise of Hope contains much of Awoonor's most recent unpublished poetry, along with many of his...
Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana's most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the liter...
Clifton Gachagua s collection Madman at Kilifi, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, concerns itself with the immediacy of cultures in flux, cybercommunication and the language of consumerism, polyglot politics and intrigue, sexual ambivalence and studied whimsy, and the mind of a sensitive, intelligent, and curious poet who stands in the midst of it all.
Gachagua s is a world fully grounded in the postmodern Kenyan cultural cauldron, a world in which people speak with satellite mouths, with bodies that are singing machines, and in which the...
Clifton Gachagua s collection Madman at Kilifi, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, concerns itself with the immedia...
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The Kitchen-Dweller s Testimony asks: Whose testimony is valid? Whose testimony is worth recording? Osman s speakers, who are almost always women, assert and reassert in an attempt to establish authority, often through persistent questioning. Specters of race, displacement, and colonialism are often present in her work, providing momentum for speakers to reach beyond their primary, apparent dimensions and better communicate. The Kitchen-Dweller s Testimony is about love and longing, divorce, distilled desire, and all...
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The Kitchen-Dweller s Testimony asks: Whose testimony is valid? Whose testimony ...
Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the best-known African writers today. Spanning three decades of work, the poems in this collection address themes of colonialism, independence, motherhood, and gender in intimate, personal ways alongside commentary on broader social issues. After the Ceremonies is arranged in three parts: new and uncollected poems, some of which Aidoo calls -misplaced or downright lost-; selections from Aidoo's An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems; and selections from Someone Talking to Sometime.
Although Aidoo is best known for her novels...
Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the best-known African writers today. Spanning three decades of work, the poems in this collection address themes of coloniali...
A collection of serial poems, Think of Lampedusa addresses the 2013 shipwreck that killed 366 Africans attempting to migrate secretly to Lampedusa, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. The crossing from North Africa to this island and other Mediterranean way stations has become the most dangerous migrant route in the world. Interested in what is producing such epic displacement, Josue Guebo's poems combine elements of history and mythology.
Guebo considers the Mediterranean not only as a literal space but also as a space of expectation, anxiety, hope, and anguish for...
A collection of serial poems, Think of Lampedusa addresses the 2013 shipwreck that killed 366 Africans attempting to migrate secretly to Lamped...
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Zimbabwean writer Bernard Farai Matambo's poems in Stray favour a prose-shaped line as they uncover the contradictory impulses in search of emotional and intellectual truth.
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Zimbabwean writer Bernard Farai Matambo's poems in Stray favour a prose-shaped line as the...
