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Incredibly difficult imagery and powerful story, but I've read a lot of Abani's later work and I could see the struggle of newness in this early book.
amzing, stark, poetry from his time in prison. true evidence of the power of words.
Terrifyingly close to be so far away, like the cat in the biscuit tin at the end. Read this because you have to bear witness. Read this because surviving is art. Read this because you are paler when you leave it.
Really intense and dark.
Chris Abani writes of the suffering and pain, witnessed and endured, during his time as a political prisoner in a Nigerian prison. He was arrested and held multiple times from 1985 when he was 18 years old, then again in 1987, to his last arrest when he was put on death row in 1991. Kalakuta Republic is a poetic lens into that hellhole, and its aftermath on the writer in London. I have not read anything quite like it. Kwame Dawes, author of the collection's introduction, asks a good question - H...
I read this alongside Nazim Hikmet's prison poetry, and they made for an incredible pairing. Important work.
This book is as brutal as it needs to be to represent brutality. Not easy, but then it ought not to be.
These poems make extremely uncomfortable reading: the violence verges on the pornographic. Dante's Inferno is less frightening, if only because Abani's experiences are presumably not imagined ones.
I read this book for my Global & Transnational Literature class at the University of Utah.What a wonderful read! Abani's story packs a powerful punch. His language is both beautifully gentle and necessarily violent. This poetry demands to be read and his story deserves to be known.
Even more resonant & gut-wrenching the 2nd time around.
