The Desired and the Divine
Several threads weave our lives together in this world, and their commonality makes them integral to our existence. I refer to our strong suite of feelings which are raised past essential status to irresistible forces in this anthology. In every poem in this volume, beneath whatever story they tell, we are haunted by these emotions. […]
Introduction to Vol. VIII
To write from the continent today is to stand at a crossroads – where memory meets imagination, where elegy and emergence share the same breath. This anthology is not a map but a field recording: voices emerging from silence, desire braided with loss, faith threaded through doubt, and language stretched to its breaking point. Here, […]
Introduction to Volume VII
In this latest edition of the 20.35 Africa Anthology, we are presented with a remarkable collection of poems that navigate the intricate landscapes of contemporary African existence. These poems resonate with a profound sense of place, identity, and the continuous struggle for liberation and understanding. As you explore the pages of this anthology, you will […]
This Grasping for Hope Walks with Us
The politics of poetry lies primarily in its functionality. This is an intrinsic quality of a poem regardless of whether its atmosphere is charged politically or with internal turmoil. In writing a poem, one introduces a narrative, and this involves a risk taken first by the poet and finally by the reader. Herein lies its […]
Introduction
Wherever we live, we are all in sore need of such sustenance that only poetry can offer. Poetry from the contemporary African diaspora, in particular, has much to offer us in this fateful crossroads in our human history, betwixt global pandemic and existential climate emergency. In Makshya Tolbert’s miniature nature poem, “Tree Walk with Frog and […]
Creating a New Tradition in African Poetry
Every era of poetry has an identifiable quality, which critics have tried to define: as romantic, modern, postcolonial, contemporary. They categorize poets based on their time of work, an acknowledgement of how impossible it is to do so based on “what they are writing about” and “how they are going about it.” History therefore shapes […]
Guest Editor’s Note
A striking number of poems in 20.35 Africa: Volume V manifest as elegies, giving us personal, heartfelt meditations on the realities and echoes of death, displacement, and absence. And if elegy is relentless in the way it insists on coaxing back old ghosts and painful memories, the body – its primary wind tunnel and vehicle […]
Adoption of Language to Contain Violence
All writing is storytelling. Poetry, with its heightened and condensed use of language, is not exempt from this truth. In my experience of reading and writing, poetry’s solid foundation is its way of portraying the world for what it really is and what it is not, and what better way is there to write about […]
GUEST EDITORS’ NOTE
A few lines from the poem, “Swallowing Suns,” by Mahtem Shiferraw flashed through our minds as we delved into the worlds sent our way by the 20.35 Africa team for Anthology IV: You swallow your light inward, so when others come they will not notice […] that way of masking everything behind a laughter that […]
Introduction
Language is the essence of poetry – what poetry is in and of itself – irrespective of where it is coming from. In the moment of a poem, what we encounter, foremost, is an excited language, without which literary art in general loses aesthetics, is rendered bare and without artistic value. In selecting the poems […]
Introduction
With the influx of poetry being written by Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora, it has been said before: this is an exciting time for African poetry. I (Itiola) am honored to have a hand in curating some of the best work of our contemporaries alongside Cheswayo Mphanza. 20.35 Africa has prevailed […]
Editor’s Note
In producing this anthology, there were challenges we had not foreseen, mostly because the individuals involved in the project lived in different continents and time zones. While it has been exhausting, we have also experienced that rewarding joy of pulling off a difficult task. This year, we worked with 30 contributors, Yasmin Belkhyr and Kayo […]
