Poetry Africa Biographies - page 1 of 4
Back to Poetry Africa 2002 
next page of Poetry Africa 2002 biographies
 CHRIS ABANI
top
Nigeria
Masters of the Board, 1983 Delta Nigeria (out of print)
Room at the Top (play), 1983, IBC
Sirocco, 1987, Swan, Nigeria (out of print)
Song of a Broken Flute (play), 1990 IMOSU
Kalakuta Republic, 2000, Saqi, London
Jacobs Ladder cc Chris Abani
Release, alive, from Kiri Kiri
is rare.
They hand you what is left of
your personal belongings
in a polythene bag. Everything
they did not want.
You step out and stand in the
sun thawing like a side of beef
from a freezer. Yet you are afraid
to proceed more than a few
steps from the gate. Convinced you
will be shot in the back.
Or that people will recoil from you
knowing you carry the stench
of death on your now paler skin.
But nothing happens.
A gentle breeze ruffles your shirt and
a dog menaces a parked car.
The smell of frying plantain,
carried gently hurts inexplicably.
Cold, sweet Coca-Cola stings you
to tears.
In 1985, at the age of eighteen, Chris Abani was imprisoned after the previously supportive Nigerian government labeled his first novel a threat to national security. Upon his release, Abanai became active in a guerrilla theatre group that dared to perform plays in front of government building. This activity landed him in Kiri Kiri, a maximum-security prison. On his release, a year later, he returned to the university where he continued to write and study literature. In 1990 the production of his third play, Song of a Broken Flute, led to his arrest and conviction for treason. He was held on death row in an infamous cell for political prisoners called Kalakuta, in response to which Abank wrote his collection of poetry entitled Kalakuta Republic. Abani now makes his home in Los Angeles where he is currently a Middleton Fellow at USC and teaches in the graduate writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. He has become an active and important member of PEN Center US West, and is a founding member of the Writer's Café. Chris Abani has received several awards including the 1983 Delta Fiction Award, the 2001 PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award and the 2001 Prince Clause Award. On the occasion of the launch of Chris Abani's book Kalakuta Republic, Harold Pinter said "Chris Abani's poems seem to me to be totally naked. In no way are they pitying, never for a moment self-indulgent. They're economic, spare, concrete and precise, and truly alarming. They also express a profound and very tough compassion for all the people he saw die, all the people he saw mutilated around him. The other point here is that although the poems are precise and specific, they definitely refer to a universal state of affairs which is, of course, man's inhumanity to man. These are not simply documentary facts, they are coherent and harmonious pieces of work, I admire this very much."
 AJA (ADISA JELANI ANDWELE)
top
Barbados
Recordings:
Live as One: AJA Live, Ajeland Records 2001.
Doin' it Saf, Ajeland Records 2000.
Performance on Come Let’s Dance & Sing, Yarico CD, Holders Records, 1999.
Performance on Brotherman, Rhythm Section CD, Fuzman Productions, 1998.
Performance on Come Let’s Dance & Sing, Inkle & Yarico CD, Ice Music - Holders Trust, 1997.
Ringbang Dance & Fire, Ringbang Revolution CD, Ice Music, 1996.
Jooky Jooky & Believe in Love, Ringbang Rebel Dance CD, Ice Records, 1995.
Jump in de Ringbang Tide & Bring It Up, Fire in de Wave CD, Ice Records, 1994.
Conscious, a solo album, Re-Emergence Music, 1993.
Mike Richards & The Re-Emergence Band Live, Re-Emergence Music, 1990.
Publications:
Antiquity, poem in "Voices: An Anthology of Barbadian Poetry", National Cultural Foundation, 1998;
Black Distant Voice, a collection of poetry, 1993;
Memorial Fuh Payne, poem in Crossing Water, Contemporary Poetry of the English-speaking Caribbean, Greenfield Review Press, New York, 1992;
Rhythm & Roots", a collection of poetry, 1989;
Whispers of the Spirit, a collection of poetry, 1979.
Antiquity (extract) cc AJA
i could feel de black presence of muh past
leh muh reach fuh de memory
so uh could be
wid de african spirits that sing down in muh soul
leh de jimbees permeate muh feet
wid de invisible rythms of history
that uh could dance back pass
de horror de torture
de ship de whip
de licks that get stick pon muh back
leh de memory possess muh body.
that uh could laugh wid de elephants
an’ play wid de lions
yes, leh de memory choreograph
de heritage of muh people inside of me
fuh out there de fires are burnin
in them de orishas are worshippin
de heat is hot an’ hauntin
uh could hear de sweet sweatin sound
of flames flickerin callin
they are callin because you are here
yuh never went nuh way
yuh stayed hidin’ under de talk of massa tongue
disguising yuhself all along
yes yuh never left
despite de banks de tanks
de tight jeans
though we nuh-longer long fuh africa
but pursue de dreams of colonial master
2
fuh it was uh lost comin across
now de cross is uh symbol
hangin roung de necks of yuh childrun
but i am here alive rememberin midnight rituals
when de fires dance an’ sing
now i am here wid uh memory that survive
that is carry muh back pass
brainwash illusions an’ views
back to antiquity
back to de black ancestral regions
of muh mind
One of the pioneers of performance poetry in his country Barbados, AJA first impacted on the local cultural scene as a trombonist before devoting his creative energies to poetry. He started writing in 1979, as Michael Richards, in a pure literary format, but began experimenting with performance poetry from 1982. In 1990 he took performance poetry in Barbados to a new level by incorporating full musical accompaniment in his presentations, leading to his first album, Mike Richards & The Re-Emergence Band Live. In 1994 AJA joined forces with world renowned Eddy Grant, coinciding with the start of Ringbang music. By 1996 he had produced seven tracks under the Ringbang banner on Eddy's Ice Records label. In 1998 he returned to main stream poetry, in terms of structure and lyrical content, but with a different music feel, teaming up with Barbados' premiere contemporary jazz band, Jamari, to create a fusion of Caribbean rhythms with jazz, which he calls Saf, a partnership resulting in his third solo album, Doin' it Saf, in 2000. AJA has performed at the Millennium Dome in the UK; the London Jazz Festival; the Dunya Festival in Rotterdam 2001, and at the Tanz Folk & Dance Festival in Germany in 2001. In his poetry AJA addresses world issues as well as the abuse of children and women, poverty, war, racism and peace, and he hopes that the theme of his new concert CD live as one will inspire all peoples to see that there is only one race living on Planet Earth - that is the Human Race.
 MEENA ALEXANDER
top
India / U.S.A.
Publications:
The Bird's Bright Ring, 1976, Calcutta: Writers Workshop
In the Middle Earth, 1977, New Delhi: Enact
Without Place, 1977, Calcutta, Writers Workshop
I Root My Name, 1977, Calcutta: United Writers
Stone Roots, 1980, New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann
House of a Thousand Doors, 1988, Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press
The Storm: A Poem in Five Parts, 1989, New York: Red Dust
Night-Scene, The Garden (chapbook), 1992, New York: Red Dust
Nampally Road (novel), 1991, San Francisco: Mercury House/ 1992, India: Orient Longman
 Fault Lines (memoir), 1993, New York: Feminist Press/ 1994, India: Penguin
The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (poems and essays), 1996, Boston: Southend Press
River and Bridge, 1995, New Delhi: Rupa / 1996, Toronto South Asian Review Press
Manhattan Music (novel), 1997, San Francisco: Mercury House
Illiterate Heart, 2002, Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press
This poem is from River and Bridge (Toronto South Asian Review, 1996) cc Meena Alexander
Art of Pariahs
Back against the kitchen stove
Draupadi sings:
In my head Beirut still burns
The Queen of Nubia, of God’s Upper Kingdom
the Rani of Jhansi, transfigured, raising her sword
are players too. They have entered with me
into North America and share these walls.
We make up an art of pariahs:
Two black children spray painted white
their eyes burning,
a white child raped in a car
for her pale skin’s sake,
an Indian child stoned by a bus she1ter,
they thought her white in twilight.
Someone is knocking and knocking
but Draupadi will not let him in.
She squats by the stove and sings:
The Rani shall not sheathe her sword
nor Nubia’s queen restrain her elephants
till tongues of fire wrap a tender blue,
a second skin, a solace to our children
Come walk with me towards a broken wall
-- Beirut still burns -- carved into its face.
Outcastes all let’s conjure honey scraped from stones,
an underground railroad stacked with rainbow skin,
Manhattan’s mixed rivers rising.
Meena Alexander, born in India, is presently Distinguished Professor of English and Women's Studies at Hunter College and the Graduate Centre, City University of New York. Her numerous publications have been translated into many languages including Malayalam, Hindi, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Swedish. Alexander's memoir, Fault Lines, was selected as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 1993, and her latest book of poetry, Illiterate Heart, has recently won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award. Meena Alexander's poetry and prose writings have been published in numerous magazines and included in many anthologies, such as Making Waves, Writing by Asian Women, The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry, and in the CD Rom series: American Journey, and she has written prefaces for many other publications. Meena Alexander has received numerous awards from various Arts Councils and Institutions, and she has been a Visiting Fellow at six different universities around the world. In 1998 she was a Member of the Jury for the Neustadt International Award in Literature, and she is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award to India, 2002-2003. Having spent her childhood in India and North Africa, being educated in England and now living in America, Alexander has a special interest in questions of migration, trauma and memory. Her poetry emerges as a consciousness moving between the two different worlds of memory and present-day experience, lit by multiple languages. Her experience of exile is translated into the intimate exploration of her connections to both India and America. Drawing on the fascinating images and languages that her dual life has given her, Alexander deftly joins together contradictory geographies, thoughts, and feelings. Her current work involves a commission she has received from the Royal Festival Hall, London, to compose a poem on New York for Poetry International 2002.
 SHABBIR BANOOBHAI
top
South Africa
Publications:
Echoes of my other self, 1980, Ravan Press
Shadows of a sun-darkened land, 1984, Ravan Press
Wisdom in a Jug - Reflections of Love, 1999 (private publication)
Inward moon outward sun, 2002, University of Natal Press
Prayer cc Shabbir Banoobhai
O Lord of Grace and Mercy
O Dispenser of Love
O our Protector
in this age of war and waste
in this time of lies laundered as truth
in this day of mayhem and madness
ambush us with your love at every turn
cluster-bomb us with your grace and mercy
strike us with your missiles of guidance
commit us to the suicide of our egos
fill the caves of our minds with emptiness
except for the light of your presence
grant us endless loss of our greed and anger
and in the rubble of what we claim is true
help us find ourselves besieged by you
19 November 2001
Shabbir Banoobhai was born in Durban in 1949 where he lived until his move to Cape Town in 1995. Of necessity he shared the fate of the larger black community of South Africans, and his poetry reflects that struggle. He has also identified with victims of oppressive regimes elsewhere, including the Balkans, where he traveled with a journalist friend on a mission to Sarajevo in 1992. One of the central poems of his latest volume, Sarajevo, for which he received the 2001 Thomas Pringle Award for poetry, records this experience. Shabbir Banoobhai's poetry is interwoven with spiritual, political and personal themes. Douglas Livingstone said of his first volume of poetry: " An obsessive and talented poet, a precocious master of the word and a fine lyricist to boot, almost every line of the work was subliminally ignited by the ancient great Islamic poets. He shares their prime qualities: sensuality, passion, brilliance of imagery, a holistic approach to nature, and of course, love of God." Banoobhai's mystical writing has become more clearly directed against narrow-minded and exclusive religious thinking, perhaps influenced by South African society. He has a website www.veilsoflight.com where he writes philosophical meditations, soon to be published under the title Lightmail. His personal poetry is chiefly for his two daughters and his wife, a teacher of Arabic, and for his friends. After his second book was published in 1984, he did not publish again (though he continued to write) until 1999 when he brought out, as a private publication, a book of brief poems and spiritual reflections, Wisdom in a Jug - Reflections of Love. His latest publication, inward moon outward sun, will be launched at Poetry Africa 2002.
 JILL BATTSON
top
Canada
Publications:
Hard Candy, 1997, Insomniac Press
Ashes are Bone and Dust, 2001, Insomniac Press
On Seeing Safia cc Jill Battson
When I speak she recognizes my voice
calculating memories in sapphire clearness
empty abacus screen, the beads waiting for patterns
where ideas are stored and history formed
past lives and alien interpretations
through mere centimetres she heard me speak
floated silent as I whispered through sleep
a sea shell’s shush and the beating of two hearts
felt my palm, the warm substance of healing
and heard me speak, the hum dull and sometimes ragged
from rooms and corners of rooms
the flat softness of mattress
through the variant ambiance of street, car interiors and greyhound bus stations
words from a poem filtered through auras
over clinking silverware in crowded Indian restaurants
sound floating on amniotic fluid, a vast ocean of language
languid
and she heard my voice through telephone cables
over thousand of kilometres on different continents
she heard it accompanied by the somnolent hiss of rain
before she had ears she reverberated with my timbre
before conception
now she hears me speak clear and without mediation
looks my way, the stow turn of recognition
and it is there
in the deep written pockets of a tabula rasa memory
when I speak she recognizes my voice.
 Jill Battson was born in England and has lived in the U.S. and Canada, and is currently living in New Mexico. A former art director and filmmaker, Jill is an internationally published poet and poetry activist. She was the program coordinator and host for the Poet's Refuge reading series, and organised the "Poetry Express", a mobile reading event at Toronto's Fringe Festival. She has initiated and produced many other poetry events including "Liminal Sisters" - a language poetry event; "The Festival of the Spoken Word" - a five day spoken word festival; Fightin' Words - poets in a boxing ring; "The Poetburo Slams" and the very successful "Word Up" - a series of poetry spots airing on MuchMusic and Bravo!, which spawned a CD with Virgin Records and an anthology with Key Porter. Battson has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies in North America and the U.KHer first poetry book Hard Candy was received to great acclaim and nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. Hard Candy shook the poetry establishment by its well-starched collar with its sensual style and gritty imagery.  Her second book, Ashes are Bone and Dust, sensual, disturbing and probing, maps the way through grief and recovery, and she is currently working on a novel about recovery from depression. She has written several produced plays, most recently staging her one-woman show 487 2427 - Or how I learned to live with obsession, in New Mexico to great acclaim.
INGRID DE KOK
top
South Africa
Publications:
Familiar Ground 1988, Ravan Press (out of print)
Transfer, 1997, Snailpress
Terrestrial Things, 2002, Kwela/Snailpress
The head of the household
is a girl of thirteen
and her children are many.
Left-overs, moulting gulls,
wet unweaned sacks
she carries them under her arms
and on her back
though some must walk beside her
bearing their own bones and mash
when not on the floor
in sickness and distress
rolled up in rows
facing the open stall.
Moon and bone-cold stars
navigational spoor
for ambulance, hearse,
the delivery vans
that will fetch and dispatch
the homeless, motherless
unclean and dead
and a girl of thirteen,
children in her arms,
house balanced on her head.
cc Ingrid de Kok
 Ingrid de Kok, born in 1951 in a Stilfontein, a small mining town, is arguably the most lucid and composed voice in contemporary South African English poetry. She studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Cape Town, and Queens' University, Kingston, Canada. She currently works at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies at UCT. Ingrid de Kok has edited various journals and collections, published 3 volumes of poetry and has been co-compiler and editor of another two books (With Karen Press, Spring is Rebellious: Albie Sachs and respondents on cultural freedom, Buchu Press, 1990; and with Gus Ferguson, City in Words: Poems on Cape Town, David Philip, 2001). Her poems have been widely published around the world in anthologies and journals and translated into Italian, French, Japanese and Dutch. De Kok has given readings and talks in the USA, Canada, Djibouti, the Netherlands and Italy. In 1999 she was awarded a Fellowship Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre in Bellagio, Italy, and in 2001 she was a Visiting Writer at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, USA. As an academic she has contributed chapters and articles to various academic publications and journals, while her poetry has been included in 14 South African anthologies (since 1989) and 11 international anthologies, and has regularly been featured in a variety of literary journals, both in South Africa and abroad. In her latest book, Terrestrial Thing, she brings her art to the great drama of our time: the burden revealed in the tragic Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and the ceaseless ravaging of the AIDS pandemic. Two other parts of the work provide wider perspectives; one is focused on formative family bonds, the other brings her love of Italy to life.
 JAYNE FENTON KEANE
top
Australia
Publications:
Torn, 2000, Plateau Press
Ophelia's Codpiece, 2002, Post Pressed
For the Man at Millbilly Farm cc Jayne Fenton Keane
I didn’t know what to say
in response to the secret you revealed
as I clumsily filled out the cheque
in the name of your dead son.
plant the wind in your breath
I felt the weight of those vegetables
in that squeaking dry polystyrene box.
How delicately you wrapped them.
plant your breath in the wind
I support your weekly resurrections
by buying your starchedwhite buried phrases
your smuggled cobs of tessellated rage
your crisp green lanterns of seed.
breathe it is all you have
Was this farm his inheritance?
What it is now? Tell me.
What colour is your strength?
plant the wind in your breath
plant your breath in the wind
breathe it is all you have
There are so many questions I want to ask
but they are as sharp as a scalpel
and I did not come here to dissect you.
Jayne Fenton Keane is an extensively published Australian poet whose work has been broadcast on radio and television, has featured on Voices, an ABC documentary on contemporary Australian poets, and appeared on 60 Minutes in the USA.. Keane is currently studying for her PhD in Three-Dimensional Poetic Structures at Griffith University, Queensland. She is a member of the Queensland Poetry Festival Organising Committee for 2002, and founding coordinator of National Poetry Week to be launched this year. Keane is poet, editor/curator, contributing artist of The Stalking Tongue website, and a member of Cult, a music poetry ensemble. Her multi-media Stalking Tongue website (www.poetinresidence.com) was recently launched by the Australian Minister of Arts. Featuring Australian and international poets, an online slam competition, a poet in residence, an experimental interactive section and a music-poetry showcase, the site represents a comprehensive and innovative foray into the possibilities of electronic poetry privileging the spoken word. The site will exhibit at the 2002 Electronic Literature Organisation's state of the Arts Symposium Gallery session in Los Angeles, and at an e-literature conference in Chicago. Arts Queensland has awarded her several grants and various awards for poetry and playwrighting, most recently the Mayne  Multimedia Award at the Adelaide Festival of Arts Literary Awards for 2002. Keane has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and is the recipient of 3 Writers' Fellowship Awards, including one in the USA. She is an active member of the Poets Union, the Fellowship of Australian Writers and the Australian Poetry Foundation. Clearly dedicated to poetry pursuits, Keane also works as a community medicine researcher and human rights worker in the field of mental and physical disability.
www.poetinresidence.com
top
Next page of Poetry Africa 2002 biographies
Back to Poetry Africa 2002
|
