Seven New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set
Edited by Kwame Dawes & Chris AbaniSlapering Hol Press, 2014 | Paperback | ISBN: 978-1940646589
Cover art by Adejoke Tugbiyele
This eight-piece box set, an African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) project, features the work of seven African poets, with an introduction by Kwame Dawes, APBF series editor, and Chris Abani. The boxed set is an annual project starting in 2014 to ensure the publication of seven chapbooks by African poets through participating publishers. Publication is made possible through Slapering Hol Press, in association with APBF and the literary journal Prairie Schooner, with support from The Poetry Foundation. The box set features art by Adejoke Tugbiyele and contains the following chapbooks: Mandible by TJ Dema, The Cartographer of Water by Clifton Gachagua, Carnaval by Tsitsi Jaji, The Second Republic by Nick Makoha, Ordinary Heaven by Ladan Osman, Our Men Do Not Belong To Us by Warsan Shire, and Otherwise Everything Goes On by Len Verwey.
These volumes, which are original, are as diverse in thematic concerns, poetic styles, and musicality as the peoples of Africa and its diaspora, they are books of poetry that reveal a complex and sophisticated awareness of the world.
Kwame Dawes, in the introduction
The title Seven New Generation African Poets immediately raises the question of how similar these poets are and what characteristics identify them as African. One of the exciting discoveries is that these poets exhibit a strikingly wide range of aesthetics and styles. All are accomplished writers whose work ranges from straightforward narrative to experimental.
TriQuarterly
