Poetic interventions that involve the solicitation, editing, curating, and even publishing of poets are rare in any culture. On the African continent, where it is cost prohibitive, it is even rarer. This makes this volume even that much more spectacular and necessary, and one could even say miraculous. The editors here have worked tirelessly and with little support to achieve this. What also brings a certain joy to me is that there are so many poets working still, even within that uneven and uncertain field of reward, enough to fill a volume like this. And not just as a matter of quantity, but also with enough quality and the reflexive work ethic that is needed to meet the rigors of the process and emerge on the list of the included here.  A conspiracy of a lot of hard work and larger graces. The short volume, just twenty-three pages, spans the entire continent. The range and reach of poets, against the range and reach of the individual aesthetics is impressive. It’s the kind of volume that one hopes hotels and even restaurants will leave in guest rooms, tucked beneath dusty Bibles, or folded into menus. What a discovery and surprise that would be. Speaking of surprises, lines like “nothing / touches the floor for fear of being buried,” from Ethiopian poet, Aam – Fahad Al-Amoudi; “All the blood is a black road through the sea,” by Ghanaian poet, Sarpong Osei; “it grows pain into a field of wildflowers,” by Praise Osawaru are striking and jump out of strong poems that introduce, at least to me, poets I had no previous encounter with. I admired the attempts Ajibola Tolase’s pidgin poem made to push the limits of language. All in all, this installment of this project is strong, and a must read. I look forward to seeing these poets flourish in single stand-alone books.

— Chris Abani, Smoking the Bible and Sanctificum