An Anthology of Contemporary African Poetry

From prizes, publishing houses and festivals to magazines, journals, writers’ development initiatives, grants and blogs, the contemporary literary scene in Africa is, like those in Europe and in the Americas, reliant on institutions willing to push existing boundaries. While the institutions are doing important work, collective progress is still slowed by everything from a lack of funding to a paucity of options. Nowhere, among initiatives covering the whole continent, is this more evident than in poetry.

In 2009, the Babishai-Niwe Poetry Foundation was created by Beverly Nambozo Nsengiyunva, and with it came the Babishai-Niwe Poetry Award, which rewards single poems, which eventually expanded from its focus on Uganda to covering the whole continent. In 2012, British-Nigerian novelist and Brunel University professor Bernardine Evaristo founded the Brunel University International African Poetry Prize, which honours a body of ten poems by an individual poet, beginning a remarkable transformation of our poetry landscape.

In 2013, Ghanaian-American poet and Prairie Schooner editor Kwame Dawes founded the Africa Poetry Book Fund (APBF). With an editorial board that includes the Nigerian novelist and poet Chris Abani, the Egyptian poet and professor Matthew Shenoda, the South African poet Gabeba Baderoon, Hampshire College professor Aracelis Girmay, the South African performance artist Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, the American novelist John Keene, and Evaristo, the APBF is a vast initiative. It administers the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, given for a collection of poetry, and the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, given for an unpublished debut full-length manuscript; and, through its African Poetry Book Series imprint, it publishes the New and Selected/Collected Series, the winners of the Sillerman and Glenna Luschei Prizes, poetry translations from across the continent, and its best-known series, the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Sets, which invites and publishes promising chapbook manuscripts from poets of African origin.

In 2016, Praxis Magazine launched its poetry chapbook series, which receives submissions from new, unknown voices and accompanies their chapbook publication with a response chapbook. In 2017, Brittle Paper launched its Brittle Paper Award for Poetry.

Together, these institutions have announced and promoted new poetry voices—everybody from Warsan Shire, Liyou Libsekal, Safia Elhillo, Nick Makoha, Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi and Gbenga Adesina to Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Romeo Oriogun, Lillian Aujo, Saddiq Dzukogi, Yalie Kamara, Ejiofor Ugwu, Leila Chatti, JK Anowe, and Itiola Jones.

It is in this context that 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry arrives. An independent project in the mould of 14: Queer Art, the Afro Anthology Series, and the Art Naija Series, it is the first of its kind to focus only on poetry from across the continent, and it faces newer voices some of whom are yet to enter the orbit of the above institutions, their strong work collected alongside those by better known poets.

Two years in the making, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry is the brainchild of a team of Nigerian poets and creatives: Ebenezer Agu; D. E. Benson; Gbenga Adeoba, finalist for the 2018 Brunel Prize; the visual artist Osinachi; and Chisom Okafor, finalist for the 2018 Brittle Paper Award for Poetry. The anthology, which is guest-edited by Brunel Prize winners Gbenga Adesina and Safia Elhillo, collects verses by 32 poets including Brunel Prize winners Liyou Libsekal and Romeo Oriogun, Brittle Paper Award for Poetry winner JK Anowe, and Winter Tangerine magazine founder Yasmin Belkhyr.

20.35 Africa comes with blurbs by Matthew Shenoda, Rhode Island School of Design professor and a founding editor at Africa Poetry Book Fund (APBF); Mukoma wa Ngugi, Cornell University professor and author of The Rise of the African Novel; and Hope Wabuke, University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor and author of Movement No.1: Trains.

Matthew Shenoda wrote:

In 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry we see the august breadth of an African poetics that dominates the space of intersections; intersections of geography, language, gender, faith. The poems gathered here are insights into the possibilities that take shape when we bridge our cultural specificities with a dedication to craft and aesthetic vision. These poems reach well beyond the continent and her diasporas and into the intimate spaces of every reader who encounters them.

Mukoma wa Ngugi wrote:

The poets here are in love with words and the fractured worlds they live in. The poems are at once sublime yet political, global but rooted and contradiction is the border they call home. The publication of this anthology boldly marks a before and after moment in the African literary tradition and it leaves me feeling humbled, lucky and blessed to be a witness.

Hope Wabuke wrote:

With poems ranging from interrogations of the nature of borders and the legacies of colonialism to questions of nationhood and ethnicity; reflections on gender and identity to legacies of personal trauma and national violence, the editors of 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry have taken care to select a wide variety of themes and voices that reflect the myriad experiences of young African writers coming of age. The best poetry awakens language to distinct possibilities before unimagined; here, with lyrical language both hauntingly visceral and evocatively imagistic, these young African writers do just that.