apr (usa) does poem in your pocket day... again!

This year's edition of the african poetry review's contribution to Poem in Your Pocket Day is Katharine Kilalea's "A perfect love" from her collection, One Eye'd Leigh (Carcanet, 2009).

To the left is a hi-res jpg version. You can also download & print a pdf version of the poem.

What are you supposed to do with such? Well, print it out and carry it around in your pocket. Come back to it throughout the day; read it to yourself, read it aloud; print a few extra copies and hand them out to friends, colleagues, those sitting next to you on the bus, and even those passing you along the street.

Why the hell not?

((For those on the continent, already thinking about wrapping up the day, it's a little late but there's still time; and a there's a whole evening ahead, na be so?))

I'll be handing copies out at the office, leaving them scattered about here and there, maybe even declaiming it... well... out my window? Hmmm... maybe. That's a big "maybe".

I have, though, already declaimed it once, in the privacy of my own home (I'm no fool). And recorded it (maybe I am):



So there it is. Share this around if you're so inclined or share around one of your own. What poem is in your pocket today?

brief review: "the lady missionary" by gail dendy

Kwela Books (2007)

Gail Dendy is, without a doubt, one of my favorite poets. Period. Her work is deeply affecting and both quietly powerful and often subtly surprising. And yet...

And yet I never fully warmed to her 2007 collection, The Lady Missionary.

I'm not convinced I know why but I have an idea. There are many, many personas in the collection -- as well as a light sprinkling of surrealism (or so it seems) -- and yet Dendy's voice is, to my ear, so distinctive that I could never fully embrace what the page presented to me.

Am I sure of that? No, not at all. And it's a collection that both will and deserves re-visiting. But in the moment, in the reading, I felt at least that I wanted something more. Or, arguably, something less of the Dendy I love and more of these others I was so... unsure of.

All that said, the best poems still sparkle and strike. Gently and deep. Among them are the title poem, "The Lady Missionary", and poems such as "Athlete" and "A Late Season". The two latter poems I have tried my hand at reading...




And even in doing so, I still hear her voice. Would rather hear her voice than mine. Which I'd still argue you'd do well to listen for in this collection.

You can also read a brief interview with Dendy on the collection's initial release here and read another brief review (with excerpts) of the collection here.