Popular African Poetry Books
Find poetry books written by authors from Africa for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (34)
21.
Poems and Short Stories of Seychelles and Beyond by Marion Zarqani Gendron EN
Country: Africa / 
Seychelles
Seychelles
Description:
Do you wish to be inspired into an actual presence in the Seychelles? The Seychelles and Beyond is an experience of the captivating endearment of these magical islands set in a tropical paradise.This is much more than a travel experience ?
22.
Remember, Body... by C. P. Cavafy EN
EgyptDescription:
Moving, sensual verses on nostalgia and desire by the masterful early twentieth-century Greek poet.
23.
Soft Magic by Upile Chisala EN
MalawiDescription:
'soft magic.' is the debut collection of prose and poetry by Malawian writer, Upile Chisala. This book explores the self, joy, blackness, gender, matters of the heart, the experience of Diaspora, spirituality and most of all, how we survive. 'soft magic.' is a shared healing journey.
24.
Something Evergreen Called Life by Rania Mamoun EN
SudanDescription:
"Come behind these walls that cage you something evergreen called life" After years of writing and organizing against the regime of Omar al-Bashir, Sudanese writer, journalist, and activist Rania Mamoun was finally forced to leave her country with her young daughters, taking refuge in a US city in the early throes of a pandemic. Confined to her new home, Mamoun embarked on a daily practice of writing out of which emerged these poems of loss, despair, and hope. Brought into English by Yasmine Seale with lyric agility and an ethic of care, Something Evergreen Called Life offers readers nightpier... continue
Tanzania26.
Teaching My Mother how to Give Birth by Warsan Shire EN
KenyaDescription:
"Arts Council England"--Page facing title page.
27.
The Careless Seamstress by Tjawangwa Dema EN
BotswanaDescription:
This dazzling debut announces a not-so-new voice: that of the spoken-word poet Tjawangwa Dema. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Dema’s collection, The Careless Seamstress, evokes the national and the subjective while reemphasizing that what is personal is always political. The girls and women in these poems are not mere objects; they speak, labor, and gaze back, with difficulty and consequence. The tropes are familiar, but in their animation they question and move in unexpected ways. The female body—as a daughter, wife, worker, cultural mutineer—moves continually acr... continue
28.
The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink From the Big Dipper by Abdourhaman A. Waberi EN
DjiboutiDescription:
Few of us have had the opportunity to visit Djibouti, the small crook of a country strategically located in the Horn of Africa, which makes The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper all the more seductive. In his first collection of poetry, the critically acclaimed writer Abdourahman A. Waberi writes passionately about his country's landscape, drawing for us pictures of "desert furrows of fire" and a "yellow chameleon sky." Waberi's poems take us to unexpected spaces--in exile, in the muezzin's call, and where morning dew is "sucked up by the eye of the sun--black often, pin... continue
29.
The Perfect Nine : The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o EN
Description:
Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize A dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse from the author Delia Owens says “tackles the absurdities, injustices, and corruption of a continent” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's novels and memoirs have received glowing praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and NPR; he has been a finalist for the Man International Booker Prize and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his books have sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In his first attempt at the epi... continue
30.
The Price of Memory : After the Tsunami by Mildred Kiconco Barya EN
UgandaDescription:
The price of Memory is a collection of 63 poems. The poems in vivid imagery uncover what happens when the pleasurable thrill of being alive is lost in the pain that settles among the familiar and refuses to say goodbye, as in the poems 'Baggage' and 'Maybe.' The subject of memory, remembrance and forgetfulness resound throughout the collection, from the private nostalgic experiences in 'Wastelands, ' 'The Island, ' to the collective 'Africa re-disappointed, ' 'Borderless Africa, ' and 'Child of the Universe In this poetry, we witness what comes out of keeping dreams in trouser pockets ridden w... continue