A review of 'New-Generation African Poets'
This chapbook box set is the third in an annual series, first published in 2014 by Slapering Hol Press and taken on by Akashic Books as of 2015. The box sets are a project of the African Book Poetry Fund, which also supports an impressive constellation of poetry prizes, poetry libraries in African cities, and book publishing — full-length collections by new poets, as well as collected or new and selected works by such major African poets as Ama Ata Aidoo, the late Kofi Awoonor, and Gabriel Okara. Having titled the first two sets Seven New Generation African Poets and Eight New-Generation African Poets, coeditors Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani were forced by the fact that this third iteration also features eight poets to settle the issue of naming. As Dawes puts it, “By tagging on to our new title the word tatu, a Swahili word denoting the number three, we are codifying our faith and confidence that this is truly a series.”[1] Indeed, the most recent set — Nne or four — was released this past April with ten more chapbooks, although they will have to await a future review. Each chapbook in the Tatu set bears a preface by an established poet, and each bears cover art by Victor Ehikhamenor, a Nigerian artist and writer who is currently exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and is increasingly in demand as a cover artist. While the box set is thus a quiver of gorgeous physical objects, the poetry itself is just as arresting as Ehikhamenor’s designs.
This chapbook box set is the third in an annual series, first published in 2014 by Slapering Hol Press and taken on by Akashic Books as of 2015. The box sets are a project of the African Book Poetry Fund, which also supports an impressive constellation of poetry prizes, poetry libraries in African cities, and book publishing — full-length collections by new poets, as well as collected or new and selected works by such major African poets as Ama Ata Aidoo, the late Kofi Awoonor, and Gabriel Okara.
The lives of the experimental poets 4-6
thalia, Π.O., Javant Biarujia
4. thalia (1952–)
The poet thalia (miniscule-t) was born in Katerini, Greece, in 1952, migrating to Australia in 1954. As a coeditor of 9.2.5., a worker’s magazine by and for the workers, and a founding member of Australia’s Poet’s Union, thalia’s work is informed closely and in a lived way by radical politics and radical feminism. Her most sustained lifelong project to date has been her visual works (begun 1972) with Shorthand, culminating, magisterially, in an enormous 2015 volume titled A Loose Thread that collects these works, complete with 190 or so plates (twenty-one are rendered in colour as centerfold, as in many Collective Effort Press books) and an introduction by Π.O.