Please forward widely.
Chris Abani, Nigerian poet and former prisoner of conscience, will read
from his new book of poems Kalakuta Republic at 7:30 pm on Thursday, May
10, at Midnight Special Bookstore on the Third Street Promenade in Santa
Monica.
Vividly praised by Seamus Heaney and Harold Pinter for this accessible,
moving, and profound work, Abani will be introduced by literary critic Ron
Gottesman. The event is cosponsored by the PEN Center USA West Freedom to
Write Committee, the USC Department of English and PhD in Literature and
Creative Writing Program, and the UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center.
Titled after a prison cell familiar to many of Nigeria's political
prisoners and dissidents, Kalakuta Republic is a powerful collection of
poems detailing the harrowing experiences endured by Abani and others at
the hands of Nigeria's military regime in the late 1980s.
These poems are dedicated to those who shared in but did not live through
the suffering, like John James, Abani's cellmate, tortured to death in 1991
at the age of 14, and other "kindred spirits, dreamers, fools." In them he
describes the characters that peopled his dark world, from the prison
inmates to their torturers, the generals. This is Abani's first collection
of poems following his release from jail, and while intense episodes are
vividly described, it is above all a work greatly tinged with humanity and
a durable tribute to the
triumph of the human spirit.
In 1985, at the age of 18, Chris Abani was imprisoned following the
publication of his first novel. He was released six months later. When his
second novel, Sirocco, was published in 1987, it was seized by government
forces and Abani was again arrested, detained and accused of sedition for
performing anti-government plays. In 1991 he was arrested for the third
time and held on death row. Kalakuta Republic is based on his experience as
political prisoner between 1985 and 1991.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wendy Belcher
tele: 310-559-1650
e-mail: wbelcher@...
web: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/csrc/belcher
