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This is a completely new edition of the only scholarly work on the poetry of popular and mass culture among a people who are renowned for their passion for poetry. Johnson traces the heello movement from its origins as a youth culture which in its early days was concerned with themes of love and pleasure. It later became the medium for freedom songs in the preindependence period, for the expression of modern political ideas, political protest, rallying songs and social comment, many examples of which are cited in this volume. Heello became the most dynamic form of Somali poetry in this century. This edition uses modern Somali script.
Somalia has been called 'a nation of poets.' This volume presents the most universal of Somali poetry in English translation.
So At One With You is a groundbreaking anthology of the last fifty years of Somali poetry, and marks ten years of collaboration between Kayd Somali Arts and Culture and the Poetry Translation Centre. The anthology celebrates the primary medium for public debate in this 'nation of poets', where audiences in their hundreds gather to listen to an intricate, virtuosic artform that speaks directly to them about the great issues of their time. As the title - taken from the work of Maxamed Ibraahin Warsame "Hadraawi" - suggests, in Somali literature the poet is utterly at one with their listener sharing values and aesthetics in an intimate manner that offers food for thought to English-speaking writers, readers, and critics. The present selection brings together eighteen key poets from across the generations, and combines tender love poetry and pastoral idyll with scathing attacks on corruption and hypocrisy, as well as social satire on life in the cities of the Horn of Africa and across the globe. This is a world poetry, both in its imaginative reach and in its ability to speak to the debates we all face in a time of global crisis.
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Originally published in a small edition in 1954, A Tree for Poverty was Margaret Laurence’s first published book. In this new edition, Laurence’s collection of Somali poems and stories is accompanied with a discussion of her life in Africa, and her in-depth investigation of the oral tradition of Somali literature.
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Although Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf has lived in exile in the UK for 20 years, she is fast emerging as one of the most outstanding Somali poets, as well as a powerful woman poet in a literary tradition still largely dominated by men. She is a master of the major Somali poetic forms, including the prestigious gabay, by which she presents compelling arguments with astonishing feats of alliteration. The key to her international popularity is in her spirit and message: her poems are classical in construction but they are unmistakeably contemporary, and they engage passionately with the themes of war and displacement which have touched the lives of an entire generation of Somalis. The mesmerising poems in this landmark collection are brought to life in English by award-winning Bloodaxe poet Clare Pollard. Somali-English dual language edition co-published with the Poetry Translation Centre.