• Ahmed S. Ibrahim

In Somalia, poets are considered organic public intellectuals.

• Mohammed Jameel Abdulla

The tragedy of settler-colonialism.

• Lizzy Attree

Kayo Chingonyi's latest poetry collection is a powerful meditation on the cycle of infection, death, and mourning wrought by HIV.

• Ayomide Bayowa

Nigerian Canadian poet Ayomide Bayowa discusses the influences behind his latest poetry collection.

• Wamuwi Mbao

South African poet Don Mattera, who died in July, was the real deal—preferring to throw his lot in with the ignored and the undervalued. Unsurprisingly, his monumental life and work is undervalued too.

• Farah Bakaari

The British-Somali poet Warsan Shire’s audacious yet uneven volume of poetry captures the quiet loneliness of African immigrant lives in the West.

• Panashe Chigumadzi

Poet Mongane Wally Serote’s 40-year lament, still haunts Black South Africans: “it is only in our memory that this is our land.” The land haunts our memory, and, in turn, we haunt the land’s memory.

• William Shoki

South African and Palestinian poets on the shared experiences of Apartheid and resistance. This week on AIAC Talk. Watch it Tuesday on Youtube.

• Lindsay Johns

Dennis Brutus described Arthur Nortje as “perhaps the best South African poet of our time.”

• Maria-Theres Schuler

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a rigid educational system, largely unchanged from the colonial era. Slam artists and activists are working to open it up to alternative spaces of expression.

• Tammy Wilks
• Doseline Kiguru

The Nigerian scholar and poet, Harry Garuba, who died in February 2020, was a key figure in African Studies and teaching literature in South Africa.

• Athambile Masola

Remembering Adelaide Tantsi Dube’s poem 'Africa: My Native Land,' first published in 1913, the same year the white government stripped black South Africans of their land.

• Nedine Moonsamy

Black Women’s poetry has been largely ignored or denigrated in the world of South African letters. They have to do it on their own.

• Tsitsi Ella Jaji

In praise of the late Keorapetse Kgositsile, who became South Africa's national poet laureate in 2006.

• Alex Werth

Collapsing the binaries hard-wired into the logic and narrative of “uber-gentrification;” the latter representing the conquest of science over art, technology over soul and innovation over old.

• Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang

No, Albert Einstein never said this on Facebook: “Having an okro mouth does not mean you will be given banku to go with it.”

• Taylor Steele

• Liz Timbs

Badilisha is rare: an African project funded by a mix of government and private art donors, facilitating media access to African poets.

• Lineo Segoete
• Zachary Rosen

The story of Ba re e ne re, now probably Lesotho's premier literary festival as told by those involved from its start in tragic events.

• Rustum Kozain

James Matthews has the distinction of being one of the first Black Consciousness poets and publishers in South Africa. He is the subject of a documentary by director Shelley Barry.