Return to Top of Page
African Poetry Book Fund
Menu
  • Close
  • Contests
  • Books
  • Authors
  • Artists
  • Libraries
  • Portal
  • Blog
  • Publish with APBF
  • About APBF
  • Support Our Mission
  • African Poetry Digital Portal

100 Days

Winner of the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

Juliane Okot Bitek

The University of Alberta Press | Paperback | ISBN: 978-1772121216

Purchase:

  • University of Alberta Press
  • APBF Bookshop

100 days… 100 days that should not have been… 100 days the world could have stopped. But did not.

For 100 days, Juliane Okot Bitek recorded the lingering nightmare of the Rwandan genocide in a poem—each poem recalling the senseless loss of life and of innocence. Okot Bitek draws on her own family’s experience of displacement under the regime of Idi Amin, pulling in fragments of the poetic traditions she encounters along the way: the Ugandan Acholi oral tradition of her father—the poet Okot p’Bitek; Anglican hymns; the rhythms and sounds of the African American Spiritual tradition; and the beat of spoken word and hip-hop. 100 Days is a collection of poetry that will stop you in your tracks.

it was the earth that betrayed us first

it was the earth that held onto its beauty

compelling us to return

it was the breezes that were there

& then not there

it was the sun that rose & fell

rose & fell

as if there was nothing different

as if nothing changed

100 Days by Juliane Okot Bitek Download Image

Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

Other Books In This Series:

a naked bone
through the window of a sandcastle
Waslap
100 Days
A Book of Rooms
Collective Amnesia
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • RSS

© 2025 African Poetry Book Fund | All rights reserved.
110 Andrews Hall, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0334
Site Credits