Toward a Living Archive of African Poetry: Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani on the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Series [Paperback]

Since 2014, editors Dawes and Abani have been curating chapbooks penned by emerging African poets to create texts as beautifully printed as they are vital in their living and breathing words. Here, theyve compiled their introductions to each chapbook box set they have produced during the decade from 2014 through 2024. Their introductory essays are both manifesto and new poetics, written in conversation with the voices of the poets who comprise a thriving African literary community. By publishing the introductory essays in a single volume, they offer a beautifully rendered and evolving conversation that is scholarly and theoretical yet viscerally human, as the best poetry often is . . . This collection offers a theoretical, historical, and cultural framework for African poetry and poetics that could be read as a stand-alone text or used as an entry point into any (or all) of the poets described. African poetry is celebrated in a groundbreaking publishing project . . . Marking the projects 10th anniversary is a new anthology called Dawes and Abani have taken on the vital project of publishing short collections by contemporary poets from Africa, packaged together in beautiful boxed sets. An ambitious, vital project that delivers exactly what it promises . . . As a group, the chapbooks dispel stereotypes about African writing. They also illustrate what editors Dawes and Abani note about the many ways poets can understand or redefine their ties to Africa. These insights are poignant and valuable, especially at a time when millions around the globe find themselves somewhere between new countries and ancestral lands theyve left behind. The African Poetry Book Funds