Poetry - African

THE POEMS IN 82ND DIVISION, written in various forms including the villanelle, sonnet, blues poem, duplex, ode, and dramatic monologue, among many others, are collectively a love song to the author's native Nigeria--a former British colony. In the book, whose title poem chronicles the...

"Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people . . . lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant--and never anything less than free--what he would dream for all his people." -- Naomi Shihab Nye "Catherine Cobham's translations sway delicately between mystery...

The first English translation of recent poetry by the late Mahmoud Darwish, the most important Palestinian contemporary poet. Almond Blossoms and Beyond is one of the last collections of poetry that Mahmoud Darwish left to the world. Composed of brief lyric poems and the...

Mubanga Kalimamukwento's multi-lingual, hybrid collection of essays and poems, Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies, is a kaleidoscope of emotions: at once self-excavation and epitaph, exhumation, and burial song. These words are a conversation between the present and the past.Kalimamukwento deftly navigates...

Covering more than five hundred years of cultural transformation, Bakandamiya: An Elegy is a book-length epic poem set in northern Nigeria. The poem moves from passages of mythic power to elegant lyricism with remarkable skill, subverting the legend of Bayajidda, a prince from Baghdad...

In Black Passport, Paul Akpomuje takes us through a journey of black African migration in Canada, tracing the complexities of identity, the possibilities of fugitivity, the weight of home, and the ways borders, paperwork, and diasporic placemaking shape and are shaped by belonging.This collection...

Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire "The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts."--Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist "Warsan Shire is our...

Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in PoetryIn Gbenga Adesina's groundbreaking debut book of poems, a defiant and wise exploration of exile, voyages, and spiritual odysseys, we encounter figures embarking on journeys haunted by history--a son keeps dreaming he carried his dead...

This stunning debut blends personal narrative, religious imagery, and pop culture in a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith.Author: Leila ChattiPublisher: Copper Canyon PressPublished: 04/21/2020Pages: 74Binding Type: PaperbackWeight: 0.45lbsSize: 8.90h x 7.00w x 0.40dISBN: 9781556595899Review Citation(s): Publishers Weekly 02/17/2020 pg. 176About the AuthorLeila Chatti...

El acarreo de negros traídos como esclavos desde África, al continente americano, constituyó un acto sistemático de barbarie y es uno de los genocidios más grandes en la historia de la humanidad.Al llegar a San Salvador de Bahía, los negros eran muchas veces castigados...

One of Lit Hub's most Anticipated Poetry Books !Like Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and Vallejo, Gazan poet Nasser Rabah embodies the magnificent possibilities of the human spirit and imagination under extreme conditions."Nasser Rabah is my favorite living poet in Palestine. The musicality of his lines could...

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, but until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right. Acclaimed by critics and scholars, Stephen Mitchell's version allows us to enter an ancient masterpiece...

A radical, radiant melancholy is the light that comes from Mildred Kiconco Barya's poems. Moonlight, hellfire, komorebi - light filtered through leaves. And the light from fires - buried, rekindled, luminous - a cremating fire of ritual and transformation of experience. Barya has a...

Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets2018 Arab American Book Award Winner, Poetry "A taut debut collection of heartfelt poems."--Publishers WeeklyIn her dedication Safia Elhillo writes, "The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children were assigned birth years...

"The most celebrated writer of verse in the Arab world."-Adam Shatz, The New York Times Poetry from former national poet of Palestine, illustrated by original drawings by John Berger Mahmoud Darwish was the Palestinian national poet. One of the greatest poets of the last...

The 2024 Moon City Poetry Award How do our ancestors inhabit the world that they have abandoned? What is the place of our family in our hearts? In this stunning debut collection, Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé reveals this interior world in which the past sings its...

A selection of the exquisite, passionate verse of the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, superbly translated into English Finalist for the 2025 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation - Finalist for the 2024 Big Other Book Award for Translation "An unvarnished view of war and...

In this electrifying debut poetry collection--written with the ferocity of Rita Dove's groundbreaking Thomas and Beulah--a critically acclaimed award-winning talent explores a wide range of emotions, from anxiety to ecstasy reflecting the moon's phases, from Waning Gibbous to Full.Both intimate and intricately structured Tramaine...

Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol are among the most successful African literary works. Song of Lawino is an African woman's lamentation over the cultural death of her western educated husband - Ocol. In Song of Ocel the husband tries to justify his...

"Tramaine Suubi is a visionary love poet, and stages makes a singular life feel vaster than the life cycle of a star. In this poetry of dissolution and re-making, of multiplications and expansion, embodied tenderness is a force capable of moving us "beyond the...