Book Review: Best New African Poets 2015 (Tendai Mwanaka and Daniel da Purifacação)

Reviewed by Kobus Moolman

The Best New African Poets 2015 Anthology contains the work of seventy-nine poets, from over twenty-three African countries and the diaspora. It has been edited and collated by Tendai Mwanaka of Zimbabwe and Daniel da Purifacação from Angola. The collection, which features poems in English, French and Portuguese (although English contributions dominate), was collated from submissions sent in to the editors following a general media announcement. As such, the collection eschews thematic, stylistic or historical definitions, and rather opens itself up in an all-embracing, open-ended manner to what the editors call "trying to hear the African story(ies) imbued in these poems". The editorial spirit thus is less definite or selective and more generous instead, even amorphous; as the editors claim: "We didn't want to determine what Africa speaks when she speaks".

Inevitably issues of space predominate, and the human interpretation of space as place. The spaces that sustain us as human beings (the home) or that are of significance for spiritual or psychological reasons or that we use for purposes of display and power. And of course it would be nonsensical to talk of space without talking also about time; the intersection of geography and history, as it were, in the realm of social practice, the way that all human action is embedded in a tangible world. "New Market" by the Nigerian poet Godswill Chigbu's poem, is a powerful illustration of this:

A boy asks
Mother! Is this still our home?
Do we really belong here?
It is my son. Why do you ask?
Everything has changed, everything has become new
Our market! Our market is now new
It does not sell food and meat any more
Sellers sell justice and buyers buy happily
Look over there mother! Who is that?
O! my son It is our rich senator, tomorrow is his election
Is that why he's buying those voters card?
I don't know but shut up! Shut up son

Notice how very subtly Chigbu constructs his political commentary here, in lines of almost Brechtian simplicity and efficacy. But while the operation of space and time in Chigbu's poem looks outward, via the market at the contemporary state of society and issues of corruption and the suppression of dissent, the South African poet Christine Coates takes her relationship with space inward. In her poem "Heritage Site" she asks questions about belonging, belonging to a landscape, questions which ultimately have at the heart notions of identity. Who is an African? Can a white person be African? Her answer is trenchant: "I don't own this land, but I belong here." But in her poem "Kolmanskop" (an abandoned mining town in southern Namibia) she thinks about space and identity through language, language as a home:

so I spend days walking sands,
and I occupy my body
with these words.

I love the way that the body in Coates' poem is both receptacle for language and an active agent in the process of making words; the language of the body and the body as language.

The young Zimbabwean poet, Tariro Ndoro, in her poem "Harare", explores how a specific place (Mbare township, which before 1980 was called Harare) and the social practices in that space, affect the lives of the human beings within it. Notice how detailed and sharp Ndoro's writing is:

You learnt to wash your body with soap in mouth,
Your panty too – otherwise it was stolen,
You learnt to buy a black and white TV
Even if you could afford colour
You learnt humility – pride made you a target
In Harare, your friend would steal from you
And tell you about it the next day
You learnt to walk around the slum by day
The flat – no – cubicle was too small for anyone
It was only meant for Pa
Pa the factory worker
Pa the quiet one
Pa who had left home in search for work

This clear, concrete style is a feature of what I would argue is some of the most effective writing in this collection. It articulates both strong political and personal ideas by joining the two in a dialectic that is rooted and tangible. A poem like Aaron Brown's, "Ndjamena Morning" beautifully illustrates this double-action that finds its energy (what I would call its lift-off) through concrete imagery. Born in Chad but now living and teaching in the United States, Brown evokes the living conditions in the village of his childhood in a simple stripped-down manner reminiscent of Chinua Achebe:

Mornings like this, the sun shining in patches through the trees—
         the trees with needle-thin leaves

and Moussa tuning the radio…
(crackling)
         adjusting the antenna wire

stretching from the box to the metal window grate.

Outside a motorcycle rides by, a lizard brushes across the wall,
         and from on high, the wind makes the topmost mango leaves speak.

Or a poem like the beautifully lyrical "Portrait of a Water Trough" by Togara Muzanenhamo, who was nominated for the 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry:

He walks to where
the windmill turns its sweet exercise, the steady gleam
of silver blades levelling the trough to a simple mirror

The poems in this collection reflect like a prism the nuanced complexity of the modern African experience. From a poem about refugees by Chisom Okafor ("The Bridge over Jahannam") to Maakomele Manaka's poem "Leano on my mind" about mineworkers (do I detect a poignant reference to the Marikana massacre in the windows that hold 'dying candles / in search of a hole in the ground'?), from Archie Swanson's meditation on religious understanding and tolerance in "Suleiman" to Taijhet Nyobi's powerful poem "Bold Fade" on lesbianism, there is much in this collection that will arrest and move and challenge the reader through the strength and conviction in the writing. But I would be remiss if I did not also add that there is unfortunately a glaring unevenness in the collection. In their desire to include so many different types of poems (or so many different writers who claim to write poetry), the editors have in my opinion compromised the strength of the collection. I am sorry to say but I do not know what to make of something like the following:

On one of the world's highest height.
Under a great mighty tall tree.
Sat I, observing the world.
Determination, the path I trod.

With my spherical binoculars.
Did saw I, pass the Eastern sea.
Taking a stroll on the clouds.
I examined the world beneath.

I would not have an issue with including accomplished and effective writing alongside the work of writers that are still searching (aren't we all?) for their understanding of what makes a poem work and what does not. But then do not call the collection the 'Best 2015 Anthology'. There are simply too many poems here that do not warrant that title – whatever one might think of distinctions like good and bad, best and worst.

And as a final comment, I was a bit disappointed not to encounter any poems that reflect the African experience of disability. This is a very important and too often a suppressed and even shameful aspect of contemporary Africa, and why were such voices not represented? I know that the South African writer Maakomele Manaka who is represented in the collection by three very fine poems is disabled. His work speaks powerfully to the contesting intersection of identities as black disabled man in post-apartheid South Africa, but the editors have chosen not to reflect this aspect of his writing. Perhaps Wordgathering can feature some of his work on this subject to remedy the omission."

Kobus Moolman lives in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He has published seven collections of poetry, as well as several plays. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. He teaches creative writing at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.