Pages from the Book of the Sun: New and Selected Poems by Niyi Osundare

This long-expected collection brings together some of the best poems by one of Africa’s most important poets. Covering nearly two decades, it represents a substantial part of the poet’s new writing as well as poems from his early works. With remarkable vigor and consistency, Osundare addresses major social and aesthetic issues of our time such as justice, freedom, war, racism, the environment, art, and the process of writing poetry, all of which are treated as urgent and engaging themes in a variety of delightful and grippingly lyrical styles. Osundare’s advocacy of the poetry of performance and the need to give orature a place in writing by reuniting the mouth and the ear are consistent in these poems, which are charged and enriched by the energy and beauty of oral poetic tradition. Passionate, musical, and highly expressive, the poems in this collection contain a bold experimental spirit that balances the integrity of art and the relevance of content.