Letter Home & Biafran Nights

Letter Home & Biafran Nights is the second poetry collection by Afam Akeh, one of Africa's most matured and exciting poetic voices. There is the sense in this work of an involved and inclusive poetry, revelling in the humour, play and beauty of experience but also revealing moments of heart-rending loss and unfulfilment... a sense of poetry as story, constructing meaning and plot from the connected roles and all-significant affairs of its staged players. The poems go beyond their detailed representations of dislocation, personal and collective conflicts, to point a determined finger at the fragile moments and relationships which enact them. There is here not so much faith in the untainted breath as assurance in the possibility of recovery. In the cast of vulnerable human - and occasional animal - characters we soon recognise the dog across our street or someone we know. We catch glimpses of our own dramatic and unsettled lives.