POETS WITH GUNS: A CONVERSATION WITH CHIRIKURE CHIRIKURE
Chirikure Chirikure means “that which is far is very far.” He is a well-known poet, writer, and songwriter who has collaborated with Chiwoniso Maraire and Oliver Mtukudzi among others, and toured the world as a solo artist and with his mbira ensemble. He also lectures locally and internationally on Shona poetic forms. I first saw […]
HIKIMA – a letter from Zaria
by Yinka Elujoba One evening, while escaping the rain on campus in Ife, I stopped for cover under the walkway beneath the Senate Building. Standing there was a girl in a blue hijab. Her phone rang. I thought I recognised the ringtone: it was Trane of course. It had to be Trane – the tremor […]
WHAT AFRICAN WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
In a country that “obstinately clings to its francophone ‘roots’”, on a continent where success as an African writer depends, in part, on the use of a colonial lexicon – stories spun in the tongue of the French, the English, the Portuguese – the idea of a black African transitional literature sits uncomfortably with those […]
WRITING AS AN ACT OF GENEROSITY
MAMADOU DIALLO All of our current texts in English or French were, according to an idea dear to Cheikh Anta Diop, only a simple transitional literature. – Boubacar Boris Diop The debate on national languages is at least as old as independent Senegal. Léopold Sédar Senghor and Cheikh Anta Diop represented, respectively, two opposite poles: […]
The Making of the Impossible
Review by GWEN ANSELL October: The story of the Russian revolution China Mieville Verso, 2017 The Last Days of New Paris China Mieville Picador, 2016 “There is a brand of naive anticolonialism,” China Miéville has said, “that falls back into the ‘Noble Savage’ narrative; that simply replicates a notion of beautiful natives and a place […]