Synopses & Reviews
This eight-piece boxed 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 chapbook contains:
and#8226;and#160;Mandible by TJ Dema
and#8226;and#160;The Cartographer of Water by Clifton Gachagua
and#8226;and#160;Carnaval by Tsitsi Jaji
and#8226;and#160;The Second Republic by Nick Makoha
and#8226;and#160;Ordinary Heaven by Ladan Osman
and#8226;and#160;Our Men Do Not Belong To Us by Wasan Shire
and#8226;and#160;Otherwise Everything Goes On by Len Verwey
Review
“This collection brings a highly developed sense of global politics up for inspection. . . . The elucidation of ‘the political is most often centered on the body, thus the poems are both emotionally revealing and gripping.”—Eloise Klein Healy, author of The Islands Project Yusef Komunyakka
Review
“Shane Books refined epistles unbraid and unfold into natural revelations that are earthbound, spiritual, and unconditional. Theres an unsentimental celebration in Ceiling of Sticks that lets us see the smallest feelings beneath a big sky, without any apology, and we can count ourselves as lucky.”—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Warhorses and Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 Eavan Boland
Review
“These eloquent poems address head-on issues of place and displacement, but not in the usual way. The place in these poems is both inward and outward, a powerful topography of feeling and loss, often remedied by love and always rendered by language and craft. This is a wonderful debut collection.”—Eavan Boland, author of New Collected Poems and Domestic Violence Susannah Nevison - Jerry Magazine
Review
"Brilliant, scathing, and solid poetry."—Bob Holman and Margery Snyder, poetry.about.com Bob Holman and Margery Snyder
Review
"Ceiling of Sticks is an impressive, far-reaching first collection from an artist with many stories to share. Book crosses boundaries with both urgency and ease, transporting his reader from the arena of the personal to more remote worlds of significance. This is the real achievement and the most interesting aspect of these poems: how Book takes disparate landscapes and brings them under one roof."—Ben Purkert, Harvard Review Online poetry.about.com
Review
"The success of this collection lies within Book's dual vision, an eye for that which wounds and that which remains beautifully unchanged."—Susannah Nevison, Jerry Magazine Ben Purkert - Harvard Review Online
Review
“The texture of R. A. Villanuevas words stay in the mouth, shards of what is sacred, still is sacred: linguistic memento mori, if you will, that preserve and keep alive. Take your time with this glorious collection. Breathe in: ‘black eggs, ‘pomade, ‘concertina wire, ‘wreathed in gauze, and ‘
Nakalimutan mo na ako. You // have already forgotten me. I dare say you will not forget these remains that Villanueva has saved for us.”—Kimiko Hahn, author of
Toxic Flora
Review
“These vivid and deeply lived poems question ‘every delicate gift we have thrown away. Villanueva searches the world for the divine and—gorgeous poem by poem—he finds it.”—Idra Novey, author of Exit, Civilian
Review
“R. A. Villanueva reminds us that poetry is a space haunted by history, so we try ‘to name ghosts, to face them, dark as they are. He musters an impressive courage to take up the task. And were rewarded not just by Villanuevas immense thrill for language but by his ability to fuse the bodys fact with the bodys mystery. This is a terrific debut.”—Patrick Rosal, author of
Boneshepherds
Review
“Reliquaria convokes a public hymn that genuflects in the presence of the worlds lucent crumbs and fragments. Villanuevas elegant argument with, within, and beyond Roman Catholicism infuses this collection with a classical urgency.”—G. C. Waldrep, author of Archicembalo
Review
“In precise yet lush language, these poems move so easily between the sacred and the quotidian, between past and present, and from lyric longing to physical satisfaction that it is startling to realize how much ground each poem covers, and how natural these transitions, at heart, truly are. . . . Reading his poems, I am delighted by the clarity and sinuousness of [Villanueva's] writing, by the force of his belief that the materiality of the world shares something with the beauty of words.”—Paisley Rekdal, author of Animal Eye
Review
“Villanuevas poetry is unabashedly sinewy, and uncannily, the more sinewy, the more soulful. Indeed, somehow he seems to straddle the divide between the visceral and the ethereal, and up there, where the air is crisp and clean and bracing, he is sovereign. So, no need any longer to go asking whats the matter, for the poems in this volume, quite simply, are.”—Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr. Wilsons Cabinet of Wonder
Review
"Well versed in the uprooted life of an immigrant, Menes's profound references not only convey local color but also bring the essence of his family history eye level with the reader in these striking verses."—World Literature Today
Review
"The poems in the collection are powerful, yet engaging narratives crafted by a gifted poet and story-teller."—Mary Alexander, Caribbean Writer
Review
“Drenched with the flavor and savor of the Caribbean, Orlando Ricardo Meness
Fetish is a treat for the mouth and the ear, as well as for the mind. Striking characters abound: Zvi Mendel, ‘retired tobacconist to Havanas Ashkenazim; an unnamed female survivor of a prison called ‘Den of the Lioness. Anger at injustice often surfaces. The beauty of the region springs up everywhere. But it is sound that powers these poems, a piquant blend of English spiced with Español. . . . These delectable poems beg to be tasted. To be spoken. To be sung.”—Charles Harper Webb, author of
Shadow Ball
Review
“Open Orlando Ricardo Meness exquisite poetry collection Fetish, and youll quickly see a folk sculpture of Eleggua, though I should warn you. In the Cuban Santería religion, this deity has 101 manifestations, or roads, he may take you down. In this way, he is not unlike Meness poems, which may lead us, in a matter of pages, from suburban Indiana to Miami to Panamá to Kichwa-speaking villages in the Andes. Although the destinies of these roads offer vastly different insights, if we survive them, there is a sensibility that unifies the whole: Menes does not easily identify with grand ideologies and personal arrogance. Rather, he keeps his eye on those who go largely unrecorded by history: a poor great-uncle alienated from his own family by politics, a daughter with severe ADHD, a papá assiduously mending used furniture, a political prisoner who survives cruelty by caring for the earths smallest creatures—lame rat, pregnant mouse, chirping cricket.”—Maurice Kilwein Guevara, author of
Poema and PostmortemReview
“Orlando Ricardo Meness
Fetish is a rare work of the American Creole Sublime, conjuring visions of his Cuban homeland as a sacred geography of vanquished mestizo dreams, his Florida boyhood a world of transmuting tropical wonder. At once mythic, syncretic, and autobiographical, transported on strains of epiphanic geomancy, Meness work subtly presents a new vision of América that Martí, Stevens and Walcott would all embrace. You want to whisper in a fever, ‘Adelante!”—John Phillip Santos, University Distinguished Scholar in Mestizo Cultural Studies, University of Texas at San Antonio
Review
“It is a magic-carpet ride—because the carpet is the tapestry of the Americas and its characters of tobacconists and capitalists and miners and fathers, and the magic is the language, the ‘maracas of rain, and the ‘orchids that grow in gessoed moonlight. What a wild ride; what a wild and lovely and passionate and closely observed ride.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of
UnmentionablesSynopsis
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, Shane Books collection, Ceiling of Sticks, is a powerful and unflinching sort of documentary poetics. It bears elegiac witness to the effects of global politics on individual lives. Books poems carry us to Uganda, Ghana, Mali, Trinidad, and Canadas west coast; from a religious sacrifice in Tarahumara, Mexico, to Books ailing grandfathers bedside. They bring an intimate vision of humanity to scenes of inhuman atrocity and suffering; a moment of clarity and empathy to individuals overwhelmed by war or other man-made catastrophes. The attentiveness of the poems and meditative lyrics reveal a careful allegiance to their subjects and a fearless refusal to turn away. Filled with experiences of Africa and Latin America, California and the Caribbean, family and lost love, these poems resonate with the intensity of truth as it is lived and written.
Synopsis
In his prize-winning poetry collection Reliquaria, R. A. Villanueva embraces liminal, in-between spaces in considering an ever-evolving Filipino American identity. Languages and cultures collide; mythologies and faiths echo and resound. Part haunting, part prayer, part prophecy, these poems resonate with the voices of the dead and those who remember them. In this remarkable book, we enter the vessel of memory, the vessel of the body. The dead act as witness, the living as chimera, and we learn that whatever the state of the body, this much rings true: every ode is an elegy; each elegy is always an ode.
Synopsis
From sensual pleasures and perils, moments and memories of darkness and light, the poems in Orlando Ricardo Meness new collection sew together stories of dislocation and loss, of survival and hope, of a world patched together by a family over five generations of diaspora. This is Meness tapestry of the Americas. From Miami to Cuba, Panama to Bolivia and Peru, through the textures, sounds, colors, shapes, and scents of exile and emigration, we find refuge at last in a sense of wholeness and belonging residing in this intensely felt, finely crafted poetry.
About the Author
TJ Dema was an Honorary Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowaand#8217;s International Writing Program, as well as Botswana's representative to the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad's Poetry Parnassus and a recipient of a Vermont Studio Centre Writers Residency. As a long-time affiliate of the British Council in Botswana, she participated in Lancaster University's Crossing Borders program and later mentored the national champions for the seven-country Power in the Voice high school program. Her poetry has appeared in journals including
Sampsonia Way, The Ofi Press, and
The Hummingbird Review and was translated into Chinese for the multilingual anthology
No Serenity Here. When she is not writing, TJ runs Sauti Arts and Performance Management, an organization that handles arts administration on behalf of a select number of artists and writers. Her website is www.tjdema.blogspot.com.
and#160;Clifton Gachagua lives in Nairobi, where he was born and raised. His first collection of poems is Madman at Kalifi (Nebraska, 2014) and he recently finished workand#160;on a novel. Clifton is also a scriptwriter and filmmaker, currently developing a French-Nigerian feature-length film. He graduated with a bachelorand#8217;s degree in biomedical science. He has spent a considerable time of his life on East African highways, travelling from lake to coast and back, in search of both love and Jeffery Eugenidesand#8217;s Obscure Object.
and#160;Tsitsi Jaji earned her PhD (2009) in comparative literature from Cornell University with concentrations in African, Caribbean, and African American literature in English, French, and Spanish. Her first book, Africa in Stereo: Music, Modernism and pan-African Solidarity, traces Ghanaian, Senegalese, and South African responses to African American music in print and film and is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Her poetry has appeared in Bitter Oleander, Runes Review, InTensions and the Center for Book Arts Broadside Poetry Series. Originally from Zimbabwe, Dr. Jaji has conducted fieldwork throughout Southern and West Africa, with generous support from the TIAA-CREF Ruth Sims Hamilton Fellowship, and has been a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, a Society for the Humanities (Cornell) Mellon Graduate Fellow, and a Penn Humanities Forum Junior Faculty Fellow. During the 2012-13 year she is a Mary I. Bunting Institute Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
and#160;Nick Makoha fled Uganda because of the civil war during the Idi Amin dictatorship. He has lived in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and currently resides in London. As a Spoke-Lab resident, he developed a one-man show and#8220;My Father and Other Superheroesand#8221; that reveals how pop culture raised him in the absence of his father. His poem "Vista" was used as part of a video installation to promote the Turner prize in 2008 (http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/29811526001). His poem and#8220;Beatitudeand#8221; is the newest addition to Being Human, the third book in the Staying Alive poetry trilogy. He represented Uganda in Poetry Parnassus as part of the Cultural Olympiad. Makoha was one of ten writers on a program called The Complete Works, a national two-year development program for ten advanced Black and Asian poets. During the program, he was mentored by eminent poet George Szirtes. The Complete Works culminated in September 2010 with the anthology Ten: New Poets from Spread the Word (Bloodaxe Press), edited by Bernardine Evaristo and Daljit Nagra.
and#160;Ladan Osman has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem Foundation, and the Michener Center for Writers. A 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Life in Poetry, Artful Dodge, Broadsided, Narrative Magazine, Prairie Schooner, RHINO, and Vinyl Poetry. She lives in Chicago.
Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer based in London. Born in 1988, Shire has read her work extensively in Britain and internationally, including recent readings in South Africa, Italy, Germany, Canada, America, and Kenya. Her dand#233;but pamphlet, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth (flipped eye), was published in 2011. Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma, and Poetry Review and in the anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011). In 2012 she represented Somalia at Poetry Parnassus, the festival of the world poets at the Southbank, London. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
and#160;Len Verwey was born in Mozambique. He is thirty-nine years old and lives in Cape Town with his two daughters. He works as an economist for an African democracy organization.