Böcker av Niyi Osundare

These poems from one of Africa's most highly acclaimed poets and the winner of the 1991 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, are an ironic celebration of collective aspirations, failures, guilts and hopes. They call for change in a society wracked with problems. The poet sets out to produce a collection that captures the significant happenings of the time in a tune that is simple, accessible, topical, relevant, and artistically pleasing and, as he puts it: 'to remind kings about the corpses which line their way to the throne, to show the rich the slums which fester behind their castles, to praise virtue, denounce vice, to mirror the triumphs and travails of the downtrodden, to celebrate the green glory of the rainy season and the brown accent of the dry, to distil poetry from the dust and clay of the vast, prodigious land - songs plucked from the lips of my land in its manifold laughters and sorrows.'

The home of international award-winning Nigerian poet was devastated by Hurricane Katrinia in New Orleans, destroying his library, manuscripts, and other valuable possessions. This is his first collection since that time. Sensuous, daring and characteristically lyrical; these poems are a testimony to the affirmation of life and the indestructibility of the creative spirit. We see the deeply personal side of the bard widely regarded as a political poet.