Offers a selection of African poetry arranged by country.

First published in 1963 as Modern poetry from Africa.

Farewll at the moment of parting, African poem, Kinaxixi, The grieved lands /Augustinho Neto -- Monangamba, Poem of alienation, Letter from a contract worker / Antonio Jacinto -- Angola / Amelia Veiga -- Fourth poem of a canto of accusation / Costa Andrade -- We shall return, Luanda / Ngudia Wendel -- Poem of return / Jofre Rocha -- I come from a south / Ruy Duarte de Carvalho -- Regressado, yes I am, Indelible traces / Makuzayi Massaki -- They told me / Mawete Makisosila -- Vespers, Liberty / Emile Ologoudou -- Love that, Memory / Barolong Seboni -- The season of the rains / Simon Mpondo -- Our life, Pain, Exile, A poem of Villeneuve St. Georges, From my Parisian diary / Mbella Sonne Dipoko -- Song of the initiate, War / Patrice Kayo -- A different poem / Onesimo Silveira -- Brush fire, Dance to the amulets, A mat to weave, I was naked for the first kiss of my mother, What do I want with a thousand stars in broad daylight, You must be from my country, The scorner, I myself will be the stage for may salvation!, I tear at my belly, Epitaph, Legacy / Tchicaya U Tam'si -- News of my mother, The voices, Submarine tombs, Pilgrimage to Loango Strand, Noonday in immaturity, Death and rebirth, Secret destiny, End of flight, Letter to Edouard Maunick / Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard -- Fantasy under the moon / Emmanuel Dongala -- My days overgrown, Earth and sky, We are men of the new world, Suddenly an old man / Joseph Miezan Bognini -- My head is immense / Charles Nokan -- Portrait, A fistful of news / Antoine-Roger Bolamba -- Incantations of the sea: Moando Coast, Love in the plural / Mukula Kadima-Nzuji -- Homecoming, Song, We have come home, One long jump, Parachute men, Isatou died / Lenrie Peters -- The coming turning, Sahelian earth / Tijan Sallah -- The change, Oblivion / Ellis Ayitey Komey -- A plea for mercy, The search / Kwesi Brew. Songs of sorrow, Song of war, The sea eats the land at home, Lover's song, The weaver bird, Easter dawn, At the gates, Afro-American beats III: an American memory of Africa, The first circle, Had death not had me in tears / Kofi Awoonor -- Seed time, News / Ayi Kwei Armah -- Totems / Ama Ata Aidoo -- 999 smiles / Atukwie Okai -- Black girl, white girl, Godhorse, I am the freshly dead husband / Kojo Laing -- Hero and thief, Soul in birthwaters: vi. Ghosts, A dirge for our birth, sound and silence / Kofi Anyidoho -- Home news, Of colours and shadows / Ahmed Tidjani-Cisse -- Death of a chief / Khadambi Asalache -- A leopard lives in a muu tree / Jonathan Kariara -- If, The country of the dead, Manna, A look in the past, Request / Jared Angira -- I want you to know, Wife of the husband / Micere Githae Mugo -- The village / Marina Gashe -- The bride / Maina wa Kinyatti -- What invisible rat, The hide of the black cow, She whose eyes are prisms of sleep, The black glassmaker, Cactus / Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo -- Song of a young girl, Song of a common lover / Flavien Ranaivo -- An African thunderstorm / David Rubadiri -- My father, The stranglehold of English lit, The celebration / Felix Mnthali -- Before Chilembwe tree, On being asked to write a poem for 1979, An elegy for Mangochi fishermen, At the metro: old irrelevant images, The cheerful girls at Smiller's Bar, The famished stubborn ravens of Mikuyu, Your tears still burn at my handcuffs, Smiller's Bar revisited / Jack Mapanje -- Napolo: the message, Developments from the grave / Steve Chimombo -- In a free country, A love poem for my country, Blantyre, The rain storm, The witch doctor's song, Nightfall, Nightmare, A hanging / Frank Chipasula -- I'm my own mother, now / Stella Chipasula -- Snail's lament / Albert Kalimbakatha -- When Negro teeth speak / Ouologuem Yambo -- Justice is done, Familiar oxen, The ox-soldier, Nobility / Oumar Ba -- Further off is the measured force the word of the sea, I love to encounter you in strange cities / Edouard Maunick. The seed is in me, Three dimensions / Jose Craveirinha -- Appeal, If you want to know me / Noemia de Sousa -- To the anxious mother, Woman / Valente Ngwenya Malangatana -- Poem, Poem for a militant / Jorge Rebelo -- Robben Island, Guerilla promise / Mvula ya Nangolo -- The snowflakes sail gently down, Adhiambo, Spirit of the wind, One night at Victoria Beach, Moon on the bucket / Gabriel Okara -- Overture, Eyes watch the stars, Water maid, Sacrifice, Lustra, Bridge, Suddenly becoming talkative, For he was a shrub among the poplars, Banks of reed, An image insists, Lion-hearted cedar forest, Gonads for our thunder, From flesh into phantom, Death lay in ambush, Come thunder, Elegy for Alto / Christopher Okigbo -- Death in the dawn, Massacre, October '66, Civilian and soldier, Prisoner, Season, Night, Abiku, Ujamaa, Bearings III: amber wall, Hanging day: procession, I anoint my flesh / Wole Soyinka -- Ibadan, Olokun, Night rain, For granny (from hospital), Cry of birth, Abiku, A child sleep, The leader, Season of omens / John Pepper Clark -- One wife for one man / Frank Aig-Imoukhuede -- Planting, Salute to Icheke / Okogbule Wonodi -- Melting pot, Man and God distinguished / Michael Echeruo -- In America, Those lucky few, Hooker, The woman who wants to be my wife / Femi Fatoba -- udude, Evacuation / Pol N Ndu -- Iroko, Towards a poetics: 1 and 2 / Onwuchekwa Jemie -- Song at the African middle class / Molara Ogundipe-Leslie -- Ritual murder, Hidesong / Aig Higo -- The sand seer, I sing of change, The word, Like the bee, A nib in the pond, Not standing still / Niyi Osundare -- Let us remember, May ours not be, And what if they broke wind in public?, A view of a view / Funso Aiyejina -- Let them choose paths, A naming day, A gong, Break me out / Odia Ofeimun -- Bitter, Iva valley / Ifi Amadiume -- The incandescence of the wind, An African elegy, On edge of time future, And if you should leave me / Ben Okri -- Where are the men seized in this wind of madness?, Grandma Mariana / Alda do Espiritu Santo. In memoriam, Night of Sine, Luxembourg, Blues, Prayer to masks, Visit, What dark tempestuous night, New York, You held the black face, I will pronounce your name, Be not amazed / Leopold Sedar Senghor -- Ditych, Vanity, Ball, Viaticum / Birago Diop -- Listen comrades, Your presence, The renegade, Africa, The vultures / David Diop -- Kassaks / Annette M'Baye d'Erneville -- Sugar daddy / Thierno Seydou Sall -- Violence, The continent that exists no more, Testament / Amadou Elimane Kane -- On being a poet in Sierra Leone, Poem for a guerilla leader, The hunger of the suffering man, Poem for a lost lover, Letter to a tormented playwright, The road to exile thinking of Vallejo, The philosopher, The tin gods, The brotherhood of man / Syl Cheney-Coker -- Magic, Hagar, or, the insufficiency of metaphor, The defiance of figures in wood / Lemeul Johnson -- At a funeral, Nightsong: city, This sun on this rubble, Poems about prison: I / Dennis Brutus -- The echoes, Elegy, Thought on June 26 / Mazisi Kunene -- On judgment day, Civilization aha, Talk to the peach tree / Sipho Sepamla -- Departure, The poet must die ..., Sobukwe..., I have been here before / Don Mattera -- The air I hear, song for Ilval Mackay and Mongane, The present is a dangerous place to live: I and IV, When the deal goes down, Montage: Bouctou lives / Keorapetse Kgositsile -- Inside my Zulu hut, Ride upon the death chariot, The birth of Shaka / Oswald Mtshali -- Up late, At rest from the grim place / Arthur Nortje -- The growing, Hell, well, heaven, Ofay-watcher looks back, In that day and in that life / Mongane Wally Serote -- Sometimes when it rains / Gina Mhlophe -- Listen, my clansmen, Is today not my father's funeral anniversary? / Okot p'Bitek -- If it is true, The miniskirt / Richard Ntiru -- In the fist of your hatred / Gwendoline Konie -- The hereafter, Nightsong / Hopewell Seyaseya -- I screw my brother's wife, Now that my mind flies / Albert Chimedza. Answer to a complaint, Punkpoem, The bar-stool edible worm, Dido in despair / Dambudzo Marechera -- Tarantula, See through, Her, Jikinya / Musaemura Bonas Zimunya -- After the rain / Kristina Rungano.