Bücher von Niyi Osundare

These poems from one of Africa's most highly acclaimed poets and the winner of the 1991 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, are an ironic celebration of collective aspirations, failures, guilts and hopes. They call for change in a society wracked with problems. The poet sets out to produce a collection that captures the significant happenings of the time in a tune that is simple, accessible, topical, relevant, and artistically pleasing and, as he puts it: 'to remind kings about the corpses which line their way to the throne, to show the rich the slums which fester behind their castles, to praise virtue, denounce vice, to mirror the triumphs and travails of the downtrodden, to celebrate the green glory of the rainy season and the brown accent of the dry, to distil poetry from the dust and clay of the vast, prodigious land - songs plucked from the lips of my land in its manifold laughters and sorrows.'

One of Africa's most highly acclaimed poets, whose garlands include the 1986 Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the 1991 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, this volume of poetry is part declarative, part confessional, part reflective, predominantly visionary. The volume was written around the poet's fortieth birthday. It is a vibrant celebration of life, its lights and shadows, its mountains of pain, its valleys of pleasure; and a passionate engagement with Africa's problems and manifold possibilities. The style is varied, experimental, and lyrically evocative.