One of Gambia's leading young poets and writers is the editor of this collection of new voices of poetry from West Africa. The countries covered are Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. A brief biographical note is included on each poet, and a selection of their poems. The poets were selected as the most representative of the new and variegated scene of contemporary West African poetic creativity and life.
Previous studies of African poetry have tended to concentrate either on its political content or on its relationship to various European schools. This book examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Do the roots of such poetry lie in Africa or in Europe? In committing their work to writing, do poets lose more than they gain? Can the immediacy of oral performance ever be recovered? Robert Fraser's account of two centuries of West African verse examines its subjugation to a succession of international styles: from the heroic couplet to the austerity of experimental Modernism. Successive chapters take us through the Négritude movement and the emergence of anglophone free verse in the 1950s to the rediscovery in recent years of the neglected springs of orality, which is the subject of the concluding chapter.
We Have Crossed Many Rivers: New Poetry from Africa is a fascinating anthology of some of the finest contemporary poetic voices from twenty-nine African countries. Inspired by the examples of first generation African poets like Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Dennis Brutus, and Mazisi Kunene, the poets in this anthology display rootedness in, and preoccupation with, the discourses of identity and political freedom. At the same time, they engage the more contemporary themes of human and economic rights, governance, the natural environment, love, family and generational relations representative of the African continent. Poems from Tanure Ojaide, Yewande Omotoso, Reesom Haile and Frank Chipasula are inlcluded and in all there are contributions from 68 poets.
Tanella Boni is a major African poet, and this book, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn, is her first full collection to be translated into English. These poems wrestle with the ethnic violence and civil war that dominated life in West Africa’s Ivory Coast in the first decade of the new millennium. Boni maps these events onto a mythic topography where people live among their ancestors and are subject to the whims of the powerful, who are at once magical and all too petty. The elements—the sun, the wind, the water—are animated as independent forces, beyond simile or metaphor. Words, too, are elemental, and the poet is present in the landscape—“during these times / I searched for the letters / for the perfect word.” Boni affirms her desire for hope in the face of ethno?cultural and state violence although she acknowledges that desiring to hope and hoping are not the same.
Best New African Poets 2020 Anthology, which can be in part titled the Covid Diaries is the 6th volume of the yearly anthology of contemporary African poets, Best New African Poets (BNAP). In this anthology the poets tackle the covid pandemic, some with fear, some with pain, some with anger, some with forebodings of danger; you sense the feeling of insecurity in all of the entries around this issue. This is understandable. As a humanity we have had to go, and we are still going, through one of the most terrible times in our existence, as millions get swept away in this tidal danger. But we will vanquish this monster, we will come out stronger, in the meanwhile as we fight this monster we continue celebrating our humanity in love poems, in spiritual poetry, in politics and governance, in developmental agendas, in foods, in day to day connections, which will outstay this menace. Best New African Poets 2020 Anthology has over 352 pieces from 140 African poets from among other African countries: Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Comoros, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Namibia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana etc, and those of African Diasporas in Portugal, Brazil, the UK, USA, China, etc
Crossroads of Dreams is a steamy potpourri of poetry by Franklin Agogho, Jude A. Fonchenalla and M.D. Mbutoh which redefine representations of African youth through the prisms of politics, emigration and the enduring threat of underdevelopment. How would one explain the persistence of poverty and oppression in Africa amidst the superabundance of natural and human resources? In their search for answers, the poets not only chastise but also to point to a verdant and promising future – free of corruption, greed, violence and neo-colonialism. Other themes covered in the anthology include gender, identity and family ties. Animated by three distinctive styles, the eighty-eight poems in this volume will surely enrage, provoke laughter, sorrow, disgust but also hope, courage and visions of a promising Africa in all its splendour and tribulations.
