Bending the Bow by
This title is from Africa with love. From the ancient Egyptian inventors of the love lyric to contemporary poets, ""Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry"" gathers together both written and sung love poetry from Africa. This anthology is a work of literary archeology that lays bare a genre of African poetry that has been overshadowed by political poetry. Frank Chipasula has assembled a historically and geographically comprehensive wealth of African love poetry that spans more than three thousand years. By collecting a continent's celebrations and explorations of the nature of love, he expands African literature into the sublime territory of the heart. ""Bending the Bow"" traces the development of African love poetry from antiquity to modernity while establishing a cross-millennial dialog. The anonymously written love poems from Pharaonic Egypt that open the anthology both predate Biblical love poetry and reveal the longevity of written love poetry in Africa. The middle section is devoted to sung love poetry from all regions of the continent. These great works serve as the foundation for modern poetry and testify to love poetry's omnipresence in Africa. The final section, showcasing forty-eight modern African poets, celebrates the genre's continuing vitality. Among those represented are Muyaka bin Hajji and Shaaban Robert, two major Swahili poets; Gabriel Okara, the innovative though underrated Nigerian poet; Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of Senegal and a founder of the Negritude Movement in francophone African literature; Rashidah Ismaili from Benin; Flavien Ranaivo from Madagascar; and Gabeba Baderoon from South Africa. Ranging from the subtly suggestive to the openly erotic, this collection highlights love's endurance in a world too often riven by contention. ""Bending the Bow"" bears testimony to poetry's role as conciliator while opening up a new area of study for scholars and students.
Best 'New' African Poets 2015 Anthology by
Consisting of 214 poems and 79 poets, from over 23 African countries and the Diasporas, Best New African Poets 2015 Anthology: Poetry contains poems that deal with a panoply of issues, feelings, thoughts, ideas, beliefs�, on identity, Africanness (Blackness, Whiteness, Arabic, Asian�), culture, heritage, place, politics, (mis)governance, corruption, exile, loss, memory, spirituality, sex, gender, love, the individual and many others. It travels from Cape to Cairo, Monrovia to Nairobi, rooms in the beautiful Moroccan Sahara desert, pastoral idyllic Savannas, the rainy equatorial rainforests and then flies into the Diasporas as each poet speaks his/her own story of the Africa that she/he knows, dreams and envisions with protective pride and resolute dedication.
Crying in Hiccoughs by
Crying in Hiccoughs is a graphic presentation of the more realistic phase of Africa's politico-economic and historico-moral evolution in general, and Cameroon's, in particular. From the colonial to the post-independence era, the poet sees nothing worthy of praise-singing and handclapping. So, he resorts to crying in hiccoughs and invites the blind, deaf and dumb brainwashed praise-singers to join him in singing his little songs so as to expose and challenge the demagogy.
Intwasa Poetry by
Intwasa Poetry is a book of memorable poems from inside and outside Zimbabwe. The fifteen poets who are brought together in this collection have all read from their work at the Intwasa Arts Festival koBulawayo. There is a diversity in their work. The poems of love, of sensuality, of humour, of compassion, of yearning, of sadness, of loss and of outrage. They range from the intensely personal to reflections of life at this pivotal time in Zimbabwe's history.
Lava Lamp Poems by
Colleen Higgs launched Modjaji Books, the first publishing house for southern African women writers, in 2007. Her first collection of poetry, Halfborn Woman, was published in 2004. She lives in Cape Town with her partner and her daughter.
Madman at Kilifi by
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. nbsp; 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 most we can do is “collide against each other.” Here light is graceful, and we glow like undiscovered galaxies and shifting matter. And here as well, we find new expression in a poetry that moves as we do. nbsp;