African Poets Bot

Celebrating the diverse voices of African poets.

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

African Poets Bot exists to amplify, promote & celebrate African poetry, from both new & established voices, by sharing tweet-size excerpts of published poems written by Africans across an endless variety of themes.

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[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

"he, barefooted on a football field,
donning the jersey of an Italian team;

the half-smile on his face,
like a butterfly with one wing,

almost beautiful."

—'Gbenga Adeoba [Nightshift at the Coast]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

"When shall I see again, my country, the pure horizon of your face?
When shall I sit down once more at the dark table of your breast?"

—Léopold Sédar Senghor [Long, long you have held between your hands]

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"And while you trample on the bitter red soil of Africa
Let these words of anguish keep time with your restless step—
Oh I am lonely so lonely here."

—David Diop [The Renegade]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“BIRD:
You cannot know
And should not bother;
Tide and market come and go
And so has your mother.”

— John Pepper Clark [Streamside Exchange]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“CHILD:
River bird, river bird,
Sitting all day long
On hook over grass,
River bird, river bird,
Sing to me a song
Of all that pass
And say,
Will mother come back today?”

— John Pepper Clark [Streamside Exchange]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“It is that my hands
are also my father’s hands,
and where the lines meet on the palm
both of us have met
and sat, each with his own silence
not speaking.
It is not that we are fighting
It is the shape of love we have come to.”

— Gbenga Adesina [Elegy of Hands]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“Here I am neurasthenic
like a dog
gone mad licking salty
scabs of old wounds.

With what words
and with what face
am I going to tell
my orphaned children to forget their father?”

— José Craveirinha [Cell 1]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“Even nightingales
by West Lake cannot silence
the wail of exile”

— Dennis Brutus [Even Nightingales]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“this is how time is moving over the memory of you with the possibility to forgive death’s transgression. or at the very least scraping it to a bearable frame. love, see the years are peeling you back to me so fondly.”

— Jakky Bankong-Obi [Peeled Back]

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“In the solitary township
lights and shadows play silently between the huts
children sleep
old people dream
dogs sit panting
flies buzz round the dunghill
and from the roofs, threads of water drip
— life affected by the absence of men—”

— Antonio Jacinto [The People Went to War]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“The sun spun like
a tossed coin.
It whirled on the azure sky,
it clattered into the horizon,
it clicked in the slot,
and neon-lights popped
and blinked ‘Time expired’, as on a parking meter.”

— Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali [Sunset]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“I imagine Kumase must have kissed silence the way new butterfly bones break
after the British hellfire. The city, like the unfinished flesh of something hatched
from the moon’s skull.”

— Sarpong Osei Asamoah [Doomsday Device]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

— Henneh Kyereh Kwaku [A short note on writing a joyful poem]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“The Ghanaian flag, once above my bed,
Now bleeding on my desk.
Some have said the colors are changing,
The gold is a curse to our waters
And Atiwa is dying, so China can find its bauxite.
It is as if everyone who ever came here
Was in search of their missing treasures.”

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“The sun burns an open question

The people have gone to war, the people have gone to war
when will they come back?
and no wing cuts the empty sky
Kaianga has gone to war, Kaianga has gone to war
I don’t know if he’ll come back”

— Antonio Jacinto [The People Went to War]

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“Ibadan,
running splash of rust
and gold — flung and scattered
among seven hills like broken
china in the sun.”

— John Pepper Clark [Ibadan]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“Let all of you stop the death-cry
and let me hear.
It is home; I stood at death’s door
and knocked throughout the night.”

— Kofi Awoonor [Stop the Death Cry]

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"They say Mussolini loved black shirts.
He set the trains going on time
but Rome wept all the same;
Tears dropping on the hillsides of Ethiopia."

—Mafika Pascal Gwala [Winter]

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“I cannot blind myself
to putrefying carcasses in the market place
pulling giant vultures
from the sky”

— Odia Ofeimun [How can I sing?]

[African Poets Bot @AfricanPoetsBot]

“Yes, Mandela, we shall be moved
We are Men enough to have a conscience
We are Men enough to immortalise your song
We are Men enough to look Truth straight in the face

To defy the devils who traded in the human Spirit”

— Keorapetse Kgositsile [Yes, Mandela, we shall be moved]