New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set

by Kwame Dawes (Editor), Chris Abani (Editor)

This twelve-piece, limited-edition box set—an African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) project—features the work of eleven new African poets.

The limited-edition box set is an annual project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry.

The eleven poets included in this box set are: Leila Chatti, Saddiq Dzukogi, Amanda Holiday, Omotara James, Yalie Kamara, Rasaq Malik, Umniya Najaer, Kechi Nomu, Romeo Oriogun, Henk Rossouw, and Alexis Teyie.

Genres: Poetry, African Literature

350 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2018

About the author

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica . As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his "spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music." His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley.

His 11th collection of verse, Wisteria: Poems From the Swamp Country, was published in January 2006. In February, 2007 Akashic Books published his novel, She's Gone and Peepal Tree Books published his 12th collection of poetry, Impossible Flying, and his non-fiction work, A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative.

His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today and Double Take Magazine.

In October, 2007, his thirteenth book of poems, Gomer's Song will appear on the Black Goat imprint of Akashic Books. Dawes has seen produced some twenty of his plays over the past twenty-five years including, most recently a production of his musical, One Love, at the Lyric Hammersmith in London .

Kwame Dawes is Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts and Founder and executive Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. He is the director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute and the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica in May of each year.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all the New-Generation African Poets chapbook sets from Akashic, and always find poets I had not heard of, leading to long rabbit holes in YouTube and elsewhere on the internet. I was very excited to see a new set and jumped into it as soon as National Poetry Month hit. This grouping has some poets from and still living in Africa, some born to African parents but living elsewhere, and some who have never lived in Africa, but their heritage comes from African parents. I was noticing more fragmentation even in the layout of these poems than what I remember in previous sets, and I think that resonates with the feelings of dislocation that many of these poets write about. Many have been displaced by conflict, war, rape, murder, independence; some have had the experience of returning "home" only to discover that they no longer feel the same sense of belonging. There is a lot of recent violence here, and it is painful, but the poems capture it, hold space for it, both soothing and not stepping away from the horrors that have been some of these poets experiences.

There are also poems about nature, family, love, longing, etc. The parts I picked out are not representative of the works as a whole but simply moments that caught me as I read through them. Each poet has their own chapbook with its own cover, and an introduction written by a poet, many whose names I recognized from their own previous chapbooks. I love the continuity this series feels like it has.

Favorite bits:

Thurible by Yalie Kamara (first generation Sierra Leonean-American)

Non-Compliance by Alexis Teyie

Fasting in Tunis by Leila Chatti (Tunisian American)

Time by Saddiq Dzukogi (Nigeria)

Insignia by Saddiq Dzukogi
"Keep your body
like a neighboring country
close to mine...."

We Don't Know Where We Belong by Rasaq Malik (Nigeria)

Gay Boy History by Romeo Oriogun
"What they want is for me to say I'm sorry
but I'm beautiful like a museum...."

Denial by Romeo Oriogun

Thanks to the publisher for providing early access to this title via Edelweiss. It is available April 10, 2018.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 2018 boxed set includes chapbooks from 11 poets who are each either African themselves or born to African parents. Perhaps half still live on the continent. The majority hail directly or indirectly from countries where English is a primary language, such as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. Themes range from family dynamics, to gender, sexual orientation, civil strife, and immigrant identities - mostly serious poems about serious topics - but a few break that mold and inject humor, or focus on lighter things. It’s a great introduction to a set of voices I’d never heard before.

Umniya Najaer, Armeika. These poems tend to fall around three themes: torture and oppression of activists by the Sudanese government; the alienation and cultural dislocation felt by some refugees and immigrants in the United States; and a single long poem about female genital mutilation. The poems are powerful but grim. Standouts for me included ‘beit fundurg masr al-khaliq ghost house’ and ‘ghost takes shots’, both about torture and its consequences; and ‘crossing the ocean, this is not what anyone expected’, about the utter loneliness of trying to cope with losing a husband while parenting half a world away from family and friends.

Amanda Bintu Holiday, The Art Poems. Nearly all of these poems were inspired by specific works of art (photographs, prints, paintings, sculpture), many at the Tate. The poems stand on their own, but Holiday often brings a real sense of humor to her reading of the seed works, and it is worth looking them up after reading the poems. Favorites from this chapbook include ‘Hat’ (inspired by this photo); ‘Rasha and Agosta’; and ‘Wind’. The latter is inspired by a Yinka Shonibare wind sculpture; either that same sculpture or one that is essentially identical is now part of the permanent collection of the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh and I visit it frequently. I’ve never seen it in the way Holiday does, and her poem is a beautiful take on it.

Yalie Kamara, A Brief Biography of My Name. These are mostly weighty poems about identity; several would work better as prose essays - I don't understand a number of the line breaks or word spacings, and the poems are more impressive for their messages and wordplay than for their images or music. I’d love to read essays by this author. Standouts from this chapbook for me are ‘Mother’s Rules’, a wry, affectionate portrait of a mother through her idiosyncratic advice; and ‘Soumission Chimique’, describing the experience of being slipped a predator (date rape) drug. The poem captures the horror of realizing, after the fact, how in danger the narrator was without being able to process it at the time.

Alexis Teyie, Clay Plates. This is another collection with a common method; each of the poems is prefaced with a Kiswahili proverb (translations in the back of the chapbook). Major themes include gender dynamics and coming to terms with one’s sexuality. A couple of the poems, ‘Fluid Mechanics I and II’, won a prize, but I found those largely inscrutable. I very much liked ‘Clay Plates’, on witnessing a father’s emotional vulnerability; ‘Shy Fires’, on pleasure and shame; and ‘Impact Zones (c)’, on a mother’s endurance.

Omotara James, Daughter Tongue. This chapbook consists almost entirely of poems that have previously been published, so they’ve met with enthusiasm now by two sets of editors. Somehow, as sometimes happens with poetry, none of these resonated with me - but the introduction was helpful in offering possible angles of understanding.

Leila Chatti, Ebb. These poems, in contrast, I loved, while recognizing their flaws. The sequence of poems (as arranged in the chapbook - they were originally published individually) reminds me of the Eurythmics’ third album, Touch: infatuation, love, unrequited longing, emotional instability and depression, a possible suicide attempt, slow recovery. Several poems are drenched with desire. Chatti uses line breaks to suggest one meaning and then turn in a very different direction in the next line. She also has a gift for ending a poem with a line that is at once a summation of the poem’s theme and an unexpected twist - rarely, this is just a little too on the nose, as in ‘Now That You Are Gone’ - but usually, it cinches the poem with an almost casual touch.

Saddiq Dzukogi, Inside the Flower Room. Dzukogi uses unexpected but for me often baffling metaphors, so some of these poems remain opaque for me after several readings. Family relationships are a frequent theme. I liked ‘Rainbow Baby’, about the pain of multiple miscarriages; and ‘The Language of Silence’. I’m not sure what the latter is actually about, but the rhythm of the poem is striking and abrupt.

Rasaq Malk, No Home in this Land. All the poems in this chapbook are essentially variations on a theme: the brutal, traumatic experience of civil war, and the physical and psychic dislocation it causes. The poems pile on images of broken bodies and disintegration of families and homes, and are all beautiful and appalling. One standout for me is ‘One Day I Will Be No More’, a meditation on the poet’s own mortality, the only poem that isn’t about war and its consequences.

Romeo Oriogun, The Origin of Butterflies. Oriogun’s poems center on the experience of being gay in a society that rejects and persecutes gay men. Several of the poems seem to address the same event - the murder of a gay man while his friend, or perhaps a lover, escapes by denying he knows him. The poems include some striking images and phrases; two standouts for me are ‘Loneliness’ and ‘Denial’.

Henk Rossouw, Xamissa: the Water Archives. This chapbook includes three self-consciously literary long poems that explore Cape Town’s layered identity, taking Xamissa - the name of the community before Europeans arrived and colonized it - as a figure for the city’s complicated history and suppressed lives. These are interesting but challenging poems, and I’m sure I missed references and subtleties. In the first poem, ‘Rearrival’, key words appear to have been intentionally left out, perhaps to represent the way White control silenced non-white voices and left gaps in the historical record.

[Celie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yalie Kamara's chapbook in this set is just incredible. And lots of other great poets in here too!