topics: |  poetry | africa | women | anthology

A wide-ranging collection with 42 poets from all over Africa.

Excerpts

For my torturer, Lieutenant D ... : Leila Dhabali p.4

[Pour mon tortionnaire, le Lieutenant D., 1957]

You slapped me -
    no one had ever slapped me -
electric shock and then your fist
and your filthy language
I bled too much to be able to blush
All night long
a locomotive in my belly
rainbows before my eyes
It was as if I were eating my mouth
drowning my eyes
I had hands all over me
and felt like smiling.

Then one morning a different soldier came
You were as alike as two drops of blood.
Your wife, Lieutenant-
Did she stir the sugar in your coffee?
Did your mother dare to tell you you looked well?
Did you run your fingers through your kids' hair?

	     	(transl. from French, Anita Barrows)


-—Andrée Chedid : The Future and the Ancestor--
			 [Egypt / Lebanon / France] p.13 

The dead’s right grain
ls woven in our flesh
within the channels of the blood
Sometimes we bend
beneath the fullness of ancestors.

But the present that shatters walls,
banishes boundaries
and invents the road to come,
rings on.

Right in the center of our lives
liberty shines,
begets our race
and sows the salt of words.

Let the memory of blood
be vigilant but never void the day.
Let us precede ourselves
across new thresholds.

Andree Chedid : Who Remains Standing?

				 p. 16
First,
erase your name,
unravel your years,
destroy your surroundings,
uproot what you seem,
and who remains standing?
Then,
rewrite your name,
restore your age,
rebuild your house,
pursue your path,
and then,
endlessly,
start over, all over again.

* http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/andree-chedid-awardwinning-writer-whose-sparse-language-grappled-with-the-human-condition-2214948.html
* http://www.onefineart.com/en/artists/andree-chedid/

Irene Assiba d'Almeida : Sister, You Cannot Think a Baby Out!

					p.41-42  [Benin]

	Day after day
	Week after week
	Month after month
	Life within me
	I, amazed to feel it grow
	Unable to comprehend
	the mystery
	I, afraid of pain
	Not like anything I know
	Is knowledge power?
	Is ignorance bliss?

	The first kick, energetic,
	Pleasant, moving pain.
	Will the rest be the same?

	An old Lamaze book
	On a dusty shelf
	Breathe in, breathe out,
	Breathe life.

	Sisters laughing at you
	At Lamaze too
	At all the books you read!
	When pain tightly grips
	And Queen Nature reigns powerful,
	Who remembers?
	Sister, you cannot think a baby out!

	Giant octopus
	Tentacles in disarray
	My body knows not
	How to channel the pain.

	A lull at last
	Soothing balm on a raw wound
	Then, suddenly, a dam gives way

	The water breaks.
	Surprised at the mighty flow
	I lie, soaked in pain and fear.

	An iron hand grips my womb
	And viciously lets go
	grips, lets go,
	Again and again
	Faster and faster
	Sweating pearls all over my brown skin
	Eyes wide open in disbelief
	Never knew I could be
	such a good contortionist!

	Exhausted
	I muster my energies
	Like a volcano
	Erupting a living force!

	A last pang, excruciating
	And, before I know
	A thunderlike scream goes
	As comes into this world
	The baby
	With the joyous scream of life.

	Yes, I know
	You cannot think a baby out!

Bloody masculinity : Ifi Amadiume

				 p.82 [Nigeria]

Shall I be the child of the full moon,
a slave to love
in seasoned womanhood?

Shall I dare worship yet again
starry-eyed in the temple of love
with maidens yet unbroken?

Shall I shed tears of blood
again in loving
while virgins bleed freely,
new initiates in love?

Will the source of my spring
again recede
at the blast of the unbending penis?

Will my womb at the sight of hotness
grow cold and shrink in the face of
bloody masculinity
in this peak of womanhood?

Bitter : Ifi Amadiume

				p.83
	If you were to squeeze me and wash,
	squeeze me and wash,
	squeeze me and wash,
	and I foam,
	again and again,
	like bitter-leaf
	left out too long to wither,
	you would not squeeze
	the bitterness out of me.

Beyond Poetry : Shakuntala Hawoldar [Mauritius]

This is far too rich for poetry
Far too heavy for tears;
What is that thread that binds
My wound to yours,
Till, bleeding, I can scarce recognise
Your dark scars from mine?

You have come a long way
Through the corridors of my mind;
I have travelled too, long distances
In your hazy memory,
And when we meet behind the blur of tears
You know that our meeting
Was not the casual need of a passing hour;

In you I have met men
Carrying banners to the mountains
Dragging their feet upon the stones;
In you I have seen the victor
Smiling at visions of glory;
In you I have also seen the broken
Idol of clay;
You have been my enemy barricaded in
Your silence,
Battering me wordlessly, soundlessly,
While I crumple up before your indifference.

You have been my friend,
When I stood clawing the air
Looking for mental footholds
In the shifting precipices of my mind
And you lifted me gently,
From the deeps of my thoughts,
Smoothened the creases
Upon my brow,
And silenced the queries in my eyes,
And in that moment I believed once again
In illusions of understandings
Beneath mounds of mistrust and hurt.


Shakuntala Hawoldar biography:

Shakuntala Hawoldar was President of the Mauritian Writers' Association. 
Born in Bombay, came to Mauritius in 1968 and settled with her husband and
three children at Beau Bois, St. Pierre.  She joined the Ministry of
Education as an Education Officer and developed a special interest in
Audio-Visual education, poetry writing and meditation.  She is deputy
Director of the Mauritius College of the Air and is a consultant to the
Ministry of Education and the UN. She also runs the OSHO meditation centre
at Beau Bois, where she lives.

sources:
- http://www.mca.ac.mu/prgmm_dtl2.asp?prgmm_id=0037430&prgmm_ttl=Mauritian+Writers+in+English
- http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/286023__795111598.pdf
- http://www.zenpublications.com/forms/frm_g_author_details.aspx?ltr=S






	dead bodies littering the ground in Sharpeville (march 1960) 
	image from http://www.blackpast.org/gah/sharpeville-massacre

Ingrid Jonker : The child who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga

	     	p. 191 [S. Africa, 1933–1965]

	In 1960, the apartheid police in Sharpeville opened fire on a group
	of several thousand people protesting the passes by which their entry
	into the elite areas were controlled.  69 people died on the spot,
	including ten children. (14 more died later).  This poem by Jongker
	underlines the savageness that can kill children thus.

	The last line suggests how the child is journeying (even today)
	"without a pass".

	The poem was originally written in Afrikaans as "“Die kind”. 
	Mandela has said of this poem (see video below): 
		In the midst of despair, she celebrated hope. 
		Confronted with death, she asserted the beauty of life.


The child is not dead
the child lifts his fist against his mother
who shouts Africa! shouts the breath
of freedom and the veld
in the locations of the cordoned heart

The child lifts his fist against his father
in the march of the generations
who shout Africa! shout the breath
of righteousness and blood
in the streets of his embattled pride

The child is not dead
not at Langa nor at Nyanga
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Phillippi
where he lies with a bullett through his brain

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers
on guard with rifles, saracens and batons
the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings
the child pees through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers
this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere
the child grown to a man treks through all Africa
the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world

Without a pass

More background on this poem

Ingrid wrote "The Child" after she saw newspapers showed a photograph of a
woman carrying a dead child, who had been shot dead in Nyanga, another
suburb not too far from Sharpeville that had witnesseed similar firing on
protesters.  The mother was taking her to a doctor when they were fired
upon.  She wrote about the episode in the Drum Magazine in 1963:

	Go back to the days in March 1960, when blood flowed in this
	land. For me it was a time of terrible shock and dismay. Then came
	the awful news about the shooting of a mother and child at
	Nyanga. The child was killed. The mother, an African, was on her way
	to take her baby to the doctor. ... I saw the mother as every mother
	in the world. I saw her as myself...I could not sleep. I thought of
	what the child might have been had he been allowed to live. I thought
	what could be reached, what could be gained by death?
		- from analysis by tony mcgregor



In 1994, Nelson Mandela read "The child who was shot dead by soldiers at
Nyanga" on the occasion of the opening of the first freely elected
parliament.  He chose this work which was originally written in Afrikaans,
to underline the synthesis of cultures in the new South Africa.

Nelson Mandela reads this poem

		Hear Mandela read a shortened version of this poem.

Ingrid Jonker : The face of love

				p.193

Your face is the face of all the others
before you and after you and
your eyes calm as a blue
dawn breaking time on time
herdsman of the clouds
sentinel of white iridescent beauty
the landscape of your contesses mouth
that I have explored
keeps the secret of a smile
like small white villages beyond the
mountains
and your heartbeats the measure of
their ecstasy

There is no question of beginning
there is no question of possession
there is no question of death
face of my beloved 
the face of love

biography: Ingrid Jonker

A bilingual (Afrikaans-English) poet, Ingrid Jonker brought out a
well-received volume of poems in Afrikaans, Rook and Ochre (Smoke and
Ochre, 1963).  Two years later, at the age of 32, she committed suicide by
drowning in the sea.  

Both in life and her poetry she has been compared to Sylvia Plath - like
Plath, she was obsessed by her father, a nationalist politician.  and had a failed relationship
with several writers. 

She had translated many of her poems into English.  

The Ingrid Jonker Prize for Poetry, instituted in her memory, recognizes the
best debut poet in South Africa.

Jeni Couzyn : Spell for Birth

			p.172 [S. Africa b.1942]
	
	God the mother
	God the daughter
	God the holy spirit

	Triune of love
	Triune of grace

	Stream take you
	Current aid you

	Earth receive you
	God the mother

	God the daughter
	God the holy spirit

	Triune of grace
	Triune of power.



Jeni Couzyn calls herself a blend of several nationalities (South
African, British, and Canadian) and of many identities. [Her] best-known
collection of poetry, Life by Drowning: Selected Poems, was published by
Toronto‘s House of Anansi Press. It includes the poetic sequence “A Time to
Be Born,” written about her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter.   
			- http://sufijournal.org/featured-poet-jeni-couzyn/

* biography: bio

Kristina Rungano : Labour

				p.209  [Zimbabwe b.1963]

For nine months I had borne him in my womb.
Nine months of disillusionment and pain
Relieved only occasionally by the gentle kicking within me;
The gentle movement of the life I created within me
Nine months I waited for this day;
Nine months and the grotesque lump growing on me.
And Kit making numerous sacrifices – of patience and love –
Nine dreary months of waiting for this day.

And now I was beginning to feel sharp pains in me –
And mama saying they are labour pains –
The pains which will be the spring of new life...
Would it be a boy, I thought with intensified wonder,
     – How proud his father would be,
     – Or would it be a girl –
     Someone I could teach to be just like me
And spoil with pretty frocks
And sweetly scented flowers to adorn her head?

I looked up into Kit’s eyes
– The eyes that had seen me through
– The eyes that had known my sadness and joy for nine months
And I saw in them all love and care
– The pain which he felt for me
And like the sun on a cold morning
Relieved me of all fright, all desolation.

I looked with warm contemplation
To the moment when his warm embrace would say
‘Our own baby – the very essence of our love
And tiny little hands would cling to my breasts in hunger
Tiny mouth drawing warm milk from me
An innocent little face looking into my face.
With trust
Learning me, just as Kit did.

I felt him, Kit
Captured by a foresight of summer days to come
The days when we – no longer just two –
Would walk in the dusk
Caressed by the warm breeze
And our child would learn to sing the birds to sleep
And dance the kan-kan with the fireflies.

And thus I was borne to the labour ward
Whilst Kit waited
– Waited again
– Waited in warm anticipation
– Waited for the awakening of my new beginning.

Contents

North Africa

Daniele Amrane [Algeria]
	You Called to Me, Prison Windows			p. 3
Leila Djabali [Algeria]
	For my Torturer, Lieutenant D ...			p. 4
Anna Greki [Algeria]
	Before your Waking					p. 5
	'The Future is for Tomorrow'				p. 6
Malika O'Lahsen [Algeria]
	It Took One Hundred Years				p. 8
	The Dead Erect						p. 9
Queen Hatshepsut [Egypt]
	Obelisk Inscriptions					p. 10
Andree Chedid [Egypt / Lebanon / France]
	The Future and the Ancestor				p. 13
	What are We Playing at?					p. 13
	Man-today						p. 14
	Movement						p. 15
	Imagine							p. 15
	Who Remains Standing?					p. 16
	The Naked Face						p. 16
	For Survival						p. 17
	Stepping Aside						p. 18
Malak'Abd Al-Aziz [Egypt]
	We Asked						p. 19
	The Fall						p. 20
Joyce Mansour [Egypt]
	Embrace the Blade					p. 22
	Auditory Hallucinations					p. 22
	The Sun is in Capricorn					p. 23
	Seated on her Bed . . .					p. 24
	Last Night I Saw your Corpse				p. 24
	Of Sweet Rest						p. 25
	I Saw the Red Electric					p. 26
	A Woman Kneeling in the Sorry Jelly			p. 27
	Desire as Light as a Shuttle				p. 27
Rachida Madani [Morocco]
	Here I am Once More . . .				p. 29
Amina Said [Tunisia]
	On the Tattered Edges . . .				p. 31
	The Bird is Mediation					p. 32
	My Woman's Transparence					p. 32
	And We were Born					p. 33
	The Africa of the Statue				p. 34
	On the Fringe						p. 35
	The Vultures Grow Impatient				p. 36

West Africa

Irene Assiba d'Almeida [Benin]
	Sister, You Cannot Think a Baby Out			p. 41
Ama Ata Aidoo [Ghana]
	Gynae One						p. 43
	Issues							p. 45
	For Kinna II						p. 47
	Totems							p. 50
Abena P. A. Busia [Ghana]
	Liberation 						p. 53
	Mawu of the Waters					p. 54
Gladys May Casely Hayford
	Shadow of Darkness					p. 55
	Rainy Season Love Song					p. 55
Catherine Obianuju Acholonu [Nigeria]
	Going Home						p. 58
	The Spring's Last Drop					p. 60
	The Dissidents						p. 62
	Harvest of War						p. 64
	Other Forms of Slaughter				p. 66
	Water Woman						p. 67
Ifi Amadiume [Nigeria b.1947, Igbo] wikip bio
	Nok Lady in Terracotta					p. 70
	The Union						p. 72
	Mistress of My Own Being				p. 81
	Bloody Masculinity					p. 82
	Bitter							p. 83
	We Have Even Lost our Tongues!				p. 83
	Creation						p. 86
	Be Brothers						p. 87
Rashidah Ismaili [Nigeria]
	Bajji							p. 88
	Solange							p. 90
	Lagos							p. 92
	Queue							p. 94
	Yet Still						p. 96
Molara Ogundipe-Leslie [Nigeria]
	Nigeria of the Seventies				p. 98
	Tendril Love of Africa					p. 98
	Yoruba Love						p. 99
	Rain at Noon-time					p. 99
Maria Manuela Margarido [Sao Tome e Principe]
	You Who Occupy our Land					p. 101
	Socope							p. 101
	Landscape						p. 102
	Roca							p. 103
Alda do Espirito Santo [Sao Tome e Principe]
	The Same Side of the Canoe				p. 104
	Where are the Men Chased Away by that Mad Wind?		p. 106
	Far from the Beach					p. 108
	Grandma Mariana						p. 110
Annette M'Baye d'Erneville [Senegal]
	Requiem							p. 112
	Labane							p. 112
	Kassacks						p. 113

East Africa

MARINA GASHE  [Kenya]
	The Village						p. 117
MARJORIE OLUDHE MACGOYE  [Kenya]
	For Miriam						p. 118
	A Freedom Song						p. 120
	Letter to a Friend					p. 122
	A Muffled Cry						p. 125
MWANA KUPONA BINTI MSHAM [Kenya]
	from Poem to her Daughter				p. 126
Micere Githae Mugo
	Look How Rich we are Together				p. 127
	I Want You to Know					p. 128
	Wife of the Husband					p. 128
	Where are those Songs?					p. 129
Stella P. Chipasula [Malawi]
	Your Name is Gift 					p. 132
	I'm My Own Mother, Now 					p. 133
Shakuntala Hawoldar [Mauritius]
	To Be a Woman						p. 134
	The Woman						p. 134
	You							p. 135
	Destruction						p. 136
	You Have Touched my Skin				p. 137
	You Must Help Me Gather					p. 137
	I am Not Just a Body for You				p. 138
	Beyond Poetry						p. 139
	It is Not Just						p. 140
	To my Little Girl					p. 141
	I Have Gone into my Prison Cell				p. 141
Assumpta Acam-Oturu [Uganda]
	Arise to the Day's Toil					p. 142
	An Agony ... A Resurrection				p. 142

Central Africa

Alda Lara  [Angola]
	Nights 							p. 147
Maria Eugenia Lima [Angola]
	Shoeshine Boy						p. 149
	Marketwoman of Luanda					p. 151
	Madalena						p. 153
Amelia Veiga [Angola]
	Angola							p. 155
	Wind of Liberty						p. 156
Gwendoline C. Konie [Zambia]
	We are Equals						p. 157
	In the Fist of your Hatred				p. 158

Southern Africa

Noemia de Sousa [Mozambique]
	Poem of a Distant Childhood				p. 161
	Call							p. 164
	Our Voice						p. 165
	Let my People Go					p. 167
Jeni Couzyn [S. Africa b.1942] 
	Morning							p. 169
	Spell for Jealousy					p. 169
	Spell to Protect our Love				p. 170
	Spell to Cure Barrenness				p. 171
	Spell for Birth						p. 172
	The Mystery						p. 172
	Heartsong						p. 173
	Transformation						p. 174
	The Pain						p. 175
	The Way Out						p. 178
	Creation						p. 180
Ingrid de Kok [S. Africa]
	Small Passing						p. 181
	Al Wat Kind Is						p. 183
	Our Sharpeville						p. 184
Amelia Blossom Pegram [S. Africa]
	Mr White Discoverer					p. 186
	I will Still Sing					p. 187
	Burials							p. 188
	Towards Abraham's Bosom					p. 189
	Deliverance						p. 189
Ingrid Jonker [S. Africa, 1933–1965]
	The Child who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga    	p. 191
     	I Don't Want Any More Visitors				p. 192
	I Drift in the Wind					p. 192
	The face of love					p. 193
	I am With Those						p. 194
	Pregnant Woman						p. 195
	Dog							p. 196
Lindiwe Mabuza [S. Africa]
	A Love Song						p. 197
	Dream Cloud						p. 198
	Death to the Gold Mine!					p. 199
	Tired Lizi Tired					p. 200
Zindzi Mandela [S. Africa]
	I Have Tried Hard					p. 202
	I Waited for You Last Night				p. 202
	Saviour							p. 203
	Lock the Place in your Heart				p. 204
Gcina Mhlophe [S. Africa]
	Sometimes When It Rains					p. 205
Phumzile Zulu [S. Africa]
	You are Mad: and I Mean It!				p. 207
Kristina Rungano [Zimbabwe b.1963]
	Labour							p. 209
	Mother							p. 210
	The Woman						p. 211
	This Morning						p. 212
	After the Rain						p. 214