Download or read book An African Thunderstorm Other Poems written by David Rubadiri and published by East African Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An African Elegy written by Ben Okri and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This moving poetry collection from the Booker Prize–winning author finds strength and hope while reflecting on the complex issues that have burdened Africa. First published in 1992, Ben Okri’s remarkable debut collection features poems that are now considered classics and taught in schools and universities worldwide. Here he plays with the mystique of the African continent, countering simplistic narratives of suffering that have been imposed on it with vibrant, nuanced portraits of the traditions and resilience of African peoples. An invaluable window onto Okri’s experiences as a Nigerian immigrant to the United Kingdom and as a writer discovering his calling, these poems also speak to universal truths about love, injustice, and the search for meaning.
Download or read book A Fallen Citadel and Other Poems written by Imali J. Abala and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2012 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Fallen Citadel and Other Poems is a powerful collection of over forty prose poems. The poems cover an array of issues ranging from the crisis that ensued after the 2007-2008 elections in Kenya to other social issues: loss of identity, poverty, hopelessness, and AIDs. These poems are powerful, vivid, full of imagery, and delightful. Some begin tragically, but end with hope; they begin with an everyday event, but end with a philosophical question about the meaning of life; and others are not only disturbing, but also thought provoking. Abala's poetic maneuvers in this collection are bound to delight and fascinate any reader.
Download or read book Poems from East Africa written by David Cook and published by East African Publishers. This book was released on 1996 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spirit of the poetic flowering of the 1960s is encapsulated in this comprehensive anthology. The collection gives voice to some fifty poets from Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, writing in English. The diversity of the interests and styles of the individual poets is illustrated: a blend of the gentle lyricism that is a feature of East African writing. All the major poets are included, and many not so well known. Amongst the best known are Jared Angira, Jonathan Kariara, Joseph Kariuki, Taban Lo Liyong, Okot p'Bitek, and David Rubadiri - one of the editors.
Download or read book Haruko Love Poems written by June Jordan and published by Serpent's Tail. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In trailblazing poet, essayist, teacher and activist June Jordan's poems, love is a vision of revolutionary solidarity, crossing borders both emotional and literal with an outstretched hand. Haruko traces the faltering arc of a passionate love affair with another woman while Love Poems encompasses relationships with men and women, political resistance, the need for self-care in a demanding, uncaring world and apocalyptic visions of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. A contemporary of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, June Jordan's spectacular poetry remains profoundly politically potent, lyrically inventive and breathtakingly romantic. First published in 1994, Haruko/ Love poems is a vitally important modern classic.
Download or read book Mandela the Spear and Other Poems written by Atukwei Okai and published by African Perspectives Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strength of Mandela the Spear and other Poems lies in Okais burning desire to celebrate the black experience and culture, through the iconic figures who symbolize those struggles and triumphs. Thus, not surprisingly, one encounters names like Mandela, Nadine Gordimer, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, to name a few. Okai has long established himself as one of the towering figures in the field of modern African poetry in English. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of a vigorous reinvention of the poetic genre that revolutionized the poet/audience relationship, changed the mode of expression from scriptography to narratology, and the role of the audience from that of passive reception to active participation.
Download or read book Book of Hours written by Kevin Young and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A decade after the sudden and tragic loss of his father, we witness the unfolding of grief. “In the night I brush / my teeth with a razor,” he tells us, in one of the collection’s piercing two-line poems. Capturing the strange silence of bereavement (“Not the storm / but the calm / that slays me”), Kevin Young acknowledges, even celebrates, life’s passages, his loss transformed and tempered in a sequence about the birth of his son: in “Crowning,” he delivers what is surely one of the most powerful birth poems written by a man, describing “her face / full of fire, then groaning your face / out like a flower, blood-bloom,/ crocused into air.” Ending this book of both birth and grief, the gorgeous title sequence brings acceptance, asking “What good/are wishes if they aren’t / used up?” while understanding “How to listen / to what’s gone.” Young’s frank music speaks directly to the reader in these elemental poems, reminding us that the right words can both comfort us and enlarge our understanding of life’s mysteries.
Download or read book The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 written by Simon Gikandi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-24 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English Since 1945 challenges the conventional belief that the English-language literary traditions of East Africa are restricted to the former British colonies of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Instead, these traditions stretch far into such neighboring countries as Somalia and Ethiopia. Simon Gikandi and Evan Mwangi assemble a truly inclusive list of major writers and trends. They begin with a chronology of key historical events and an overview of the emergence and transformation of literary culture in the region. Then they provide an alphabetical list of major writers and brief descriptions of their concerns and achievements. Some of the writers discussed include the Kenyan novelists Grace Ogot and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ugandan poet and essayist Taban Lo Liyong, Ethiopian playwright and poet Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin, Tanzanian novelist and diplomat Peter Palangyo, Ethiopian novelist Berhane Mariam Sahle-Sellassie, and the novelist M. G. Vassanji, who portrays the Indian diaspora in Africa, Europe, and North America. Separate entries within this list describe thematic concerns, such as colonialism, decolonization, the black aesthetic, and the language question; the growth of genres like autobiography and popular literature; important movements like cultural nationalism and feminism; and the impact of major forces such as AIDS/HIV, Christian missions, and urbanization. Comprehensive and richly detailed, this guide offers a fresh perspective on the role of East Africa in the development of African and world literature in English and a new understanding of the historical, cultural, and geopolitical boundaries of the region.
Download or read book Bending the Bow written by Frank M Chipasula and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2009-08-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 archaeology 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 dialogue. The anonymously written love poems fromPharaonic 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; Léopold Sédar 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.
Download or read book K cracy Trees in the Storm and other Poems written by F. Ndi and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In K?cracy, Trees in the Storm and Other Poems, Bill Ndi vociferously bemoans the fate of a world in which the good and the evil are intimate bedfellows; a world wherein miscreants proceed with nauseating impunity to trample on innocence. The poet, a widely traveled scholar in Africa, Europe, and the Americas, currently resides in Australia where he is hailed as an Ambassador of the Peace. Informed by his experience as a child of the world - being at home away from home and thinking of home, Bill Ndi serves the reader with a delicious platter of poetic maze which to him is synonymous to the political maze he has known around the world.
Download or read book The New Testament written by Jericho Brown and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honored as a "Best Book of 2014" by Library Journal NPR.org writes: “In his second collection, The New Testament, Brown treats disease and love and lust between men, with a gentle touch, returning again and again to the stories of the Bible, which confirm or dispute his vision of real life. 'Every last word is contagious,' he writes, awake to all the implications of that phrase. There is plenty of guilt—survivor’s guilt, sinner’s guilt—and ever-present death, but also the joy of survival and sin. And not everyone has the chutzpah to rewrite The Good Book.”—NPR.org "Erotic and grief-stricken, ministerial and playful, Brown offers his reader a journey unlike any other in contemporary poetry."—Rain Taxi "To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius."—Claudia Rankine In the world of Jericho Brown's second book, disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighborhood, memories run through the mind, trauma runs through generations. Almost eerily quiet in even the bluntest of poems, Brown gives us the ache of a throat that has yet to say the hardest thing—and the truth is coming on fast. Fairy Tale Say the shame I see inching like steam Along the streets will never seep Beneath the doors of this bedroom, And if it does, if we dare to breathe, Tell me that though the world ends us, Lover, it cannot end our love Of narrative. Don’t you have a story For me?—like the one you tell With fingers over my lips to keep me From sighing when—before the queen Is kidnapped—the prince bows To the enemy, handing over the horn Of his favorite unicorn like those men Brought, bought, and whipped until They accepted their masters’ names. Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award. He currently teaches at Emory University and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Download or read book A Grain of Wheat written by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Who Owns the Problem written by Pius Adesanmi and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How may we conceptualize Africa in the driver’s seat of her own destiny in the twenty-first century? How practically may her cultures become the foundation and driving force of her innovation, development, and growth in the age of the global knowledge economy? How may the Africanist disciplines in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences be revamped to rise up to these challenges through new imaginaries of intersectional reflection? This book assembles lectures given by Pius Adesanmi that address these questions. Adesanmi sought to create an African world of signification in which verbal artistry interpellates performer and audience in a heuristic process of knowledge production. The narrative and delivery of his arguments, the antiphonal call and response, and the aspects of Yoruba oratory and verbal resources all combine with diction and borrowings from Nigerian popular culture to create a distinct African performative mode. This mode becomes a form of resistance, specifically against the pressure to conform to Western ideals of the packaging, standardization, and delivery of knowledge. Together, these short essays preserve the committed and passionate voice of an African writer lost far too soon. Adesanmi urges his readers to commit themselves to Africa’s cultural agency.
Download or read book A Study Guide for Octavio Paz s Duration written by Octavio Paz and published by Gale Cengage Learning. This book was released on with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book First Food Fight This Fall and Other School Poems written by Marilyn Singer and published by Sterling Publishing Company. This book was released on 2008 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed poet Singer serves up a helping of wit and humor with this collection of school-themed poems sure to get children in the mood for back to school. Full color.
Download or read book This Little Light of Mine written by Terry Lee Dick Dykstra and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2011-08-25 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All of it happened. It was hard for author Terry Dykstra to believe. Yet if she could not believe it, she had her memoir to prove it to herself. She dreamed of becoming a missionary in Africa, and the dream came true. Orphaned and vulnerable children were fed and educated. Grace rose up and walked. A university soared on the wings of eagles. Abused women fought back with political clout. A teenaged girl jumped over puddles of blood escaping ethnic violence. HIV/AIDS stalked the land. Eager, bright, and beautiful Kenyan students became skilled and loving Christian pastors. Violence and crime and corruption were commonplace. Missionary friends were gunned down and killed. Yet the persistent light of the Christian faith remains a beacon of hope in Kenya. The American and Scottish missionaries who arrived in Kikuyu one hundred years ago would be proud of the Kenyan Christians who continue to carry the torch. They clothe the naked, feed the hungry, bind up the wounds, and preach the good news to the poor. Down through the ages, the work of Christians goes on from generation to generation, from continent to continent. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. Terry witnessed the Church in action in Kenya, and she was humbled and blessed.
Download or read book I Am An African written by Wayne Visser and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This creative collection brings together Africa poems by South African poet and writer, Wayne Visser, including the ever popular "I Am An African", as well as old favourites like "Women of Africa", "I Know A Place in Africa", "Prayer for Africa" and "African Dream". The anthology celebrates the luminous continent and its rainbow people. The updated 5th Edition includes new poems like "Africa Untamed" and "Land of the Sun".