Guest Editors: Safia Elhillo and Gbenga Adesina
Cover Design by Tochi Itanyi
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.
– Matthew Shenoda, Professor – Rhode Island School of Design and author of Tahrir Suite: Poems
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.
– Hope Wabuke, Professor – University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of Movement No.1: Trains
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.
– Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Professor – Cornell University and author of Nairobi Heat & Logotherapy
I have layers of skin that hug me before I bleed. They cling to me even as I betray myself.
blood is better than noose. Scars better than red bath. I have never held a gun anyway
The streets in which I lived and
the gardens where they’re scattered, all my family but me
I don’t remember who named me
it’s a name so uncommon you could pull it out of a crowd. at home it is not at all special
The loss of our jobs has made us soft with caring.
It has humbled our tongues and taught us to ask how are you today
From the shelter of the stars and the whisper-woven wind
Daybed turned nightbed turned Starbed fronds of Milky Way
it begins and ends at the hills of Addis Ababa
and when he rests his AK on his shoulder, weaves it into himself—skin, spine, steel
soil is home wind carries brown over the border river is the border sand is at home sand is lost loss is black the infant is also black
I met Moshe in August
the month when everything settles except the dust
August means eighth month
who leaves Dakar for France, but returning
becomes a sort of shame. I share Diouana’s ambivalence
to the idea of home. So what then to make of her suicide
م name my of letter first
meme like sound
joke a become i
me forgetting history my
Then I go to my brotherAnd I say brother help me pleaseBut he winds up knockin’ meBack down on my
Because days become un-demarcated, I have not learnt to master echoes or afternoons like this where we recall the years
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