A revised and enlarged edition, this anthology incorporates a wide variety of poetry from the different regions of Africa. More examples of traditional poetry are now included, while cultural developments are reflected in the contemporary material.

Offers a selection of African poetry arranged by country

Previous studies of African poetry have tended to concentrate either on its political content or on its relationship to various European schools. This book examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Do the roots of such poetry lie in Africa or in Europe? In committing their work to writing, do poets lose more than they gain? Can the immediacy of oral performance ever be recovered? Robert Fraser's account of two centuries of West African verse examines its subjugation to a succession of international styles: from the heroic couplet to the austerity of experimental Modernism. Successive chapters take us through the Négritude movement and the emergence of anglophone free verse in the 1950s to the rediscovery in recent years of the neglected springs of orality, which is the subject of the concluding chapter.

Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the best-known African writers today. Spanning three decades of work, the poems in this collection address themes of colonialism, independence, motherhood, and gender in intimate, personal ways alongside commentary on broader social issues. After the Ceremonies is arranged in three parts: new and uncollected poems, some of which Aidoo calls “misplaced or downright lost”; selections from Aidoo’s An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems; and selections from Someone Talking to Sometime. Although Aidoo is best known for her novels Changes: A Love Story and Our Sister Killjoy, which are widely read in women’s literature courses, and her plays The Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa, which are read and performed all over the world, her prowess as a poet shines in this collection.

Gabriel Okara, a prize-winning author whose literary career spans six decades, is rightly hailed as the elder statesman of Nigerian literature. The first Modernist poet of anglophone Africa, he is best known for The Fisherman's Invocation (1978), The Dreamer, His Vision (2005), and for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964). Arranged in six sections, Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems includes the poet's earliest lyric verse along with poems written in response to Nigeria's war years; literary tributes and elegies to fellow poets, activists, and loved ones long dead; and recent dramatic and narrative poems. The introduction by Brenda Marie Osbey contextualizes Okara's work in the history of Nigerian, African, and English language literatures. Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems is at once a treasure for those long in search of a single authoritative edition and a revelation and timely introduction for readers new to the work of one of Africa's most revered poets.

Number 137/138 in Yale French Studies, this collection of essays examines poetry in French by authors from across the Maghreb Although in recent years Maghrebi literature written in French has enjoyed increased critical attention, less attention has been paid specifically to the genre of poetry. The sixteen essays collected in this special issue of Yale French Studies show how the poem provides a uniquely privileged perspective from which to examine questions relating to aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, history, autobiography, gender, the visual arts, colonial and postcolonial society and politics, and issues relating to the post-Arab Spring.