Poems of Black Africa is a poetry anthology edited by Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...

, and published in 1975 (see 1975 in poetry

1975 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* With the 1974, fall of the dictatorship in Greece, poets, authors and intellectuals who had fled after the coup of 1967 returned, and this year many began publishing in that country.* Brick Books, a...

) as part of the Heinemann

Heinemann (book publisher)

Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...

 African Writers Series

African Writers Series

African Writers Series is a series of books by African writers which has been published by Heinemann since 1962. The series has been a vehicle for some of the most important African writers, ensuring an international voice to literary masters including Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Steve Biko,...

. It was arranged by theme.

Poets in Poems of Black Africa

Abangira - G. Adali-Mortty - Costa Andrade - Jared Angira - Peter Anyang' Nyong'o

Peter Anyang' Nyong'o

Peter Anyang' Nyong'o is a Kenyan politician. He is the Secretary-General of the Orange Democratic Movement and was elected to the National Assembly of Kenya in the December 2007 parliamentary election, representing the Kisumu Rural Constituency. r. Peter Anyang' Nyong' is the Minister for Medical...

 - Kofi Awoonor

Kofi Awoonor

Kofi Awoonor is a Ghanaian poet and author, whose work combines the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict Africa during decolonization....

 - Kwesi Brew

Kwesi Brew

-Life:Born to a Fante family, Brew was brought up by a British guardian after his parents died. He was one of the first graduates from the University College of the Gold Coast in 1951. He was published in Okyeame, and four of his poems were included in the 1958 anthology Voices of Ghana...

 - Dennis Brutus

Dennis Brutus

Dennis Vincent Brutus was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have apartheid South Africa banned from the Olympic Games.-Life and work:...

 - Siraman Cissoko - J. P. Clark - José Craveirinha

José Craveirinha

José Craveirinha , was born in Maputo, Mozambique and is today considered the greatest poet of that country....

 - Viriato da Cruz

Viriato da Cruz

Viriato Clemente da Cruz, an Angolan poet and politician, was born in 1928 in Kikuvo, Porto Amboim, Portuguese Angola and died in Beijing, People's Republic of China on 13 June 1973....

 - Bernard Dadié - Kaoberdiano Dambara - Joe de Graft - Solomon Deressa - Noémia de Sousa

Noémia de Sousa

Carolina Noémia Abranches de Sousa Soares was a poet from Mozambique who wrote in the Portuguese language. She is also known as Vera Micaia. She is of mixed Portuguese and Bantu descent....

 - Birago Diop

Birago Diop

Birago Ishmael Diop was a Senegalese poet and storyteller, active as a writer in the Négritude movement in the 1930s, as well as a veterinarian and diplomat.-Biography:...

 - David Diop

David Diop

David Mandessi Diop was one of the most promising French West African poets known for his contribution to the Négritude literary movement. His work reflects his hatred of colonial rulers and his hope for an independent Africa....

 - Mbella Sonne Dipoko

Mbella Sonne Dipoko

Mbella Sonne Dipoko was a novelist, poet and painter from Cameroon. He is widely considered to be one of the foremost writers of Anglophone Cameroonian literature. -Works:...

 - Marcelino dos Santos

Marcelino dos Santos

Marcelino dos Santos is a Mozambican poet, revolutionary, and statesman. As a young man he travelled to Portugal, and Paris, France for an education. He was a founding member of the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique , in 1962; and served as the party's deputy president from 1969 to 1977...

 - Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin

Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin was Poet Laureate of Ethiopia, as well as a poet, playwright, essayist, and art director.-Biography:...

 - Armando Guebuza

Armando Guebuza

Armando Emílio Guebuza is a Mozambican politician and the President of Mozambique since 2005.- Career :Armando Emílio Guebuza was born in 20 January 1943 in Portuguese East Africa...

 - Ismael Hurreh - Antonio Jacinto

António Jacinto

António Jacinto, full name António Jacinto do Amaral Martins, born in Luanda, Angola 28 September 1924, died 23 June 1991 in Lisbon, Portugal, was an Angolan poet.-Biography:...

 - Paulin Joachim

Paulin Joachim

Paulin Joachim is a Beninese poet, journalist, and editor. He was educated in several places including Lyon and by 1971 was a French citizen. He also worked with French poet Philippe Soupault. His two volumes of poetry are Un nègre raconte in 1954 and Anti-grâce in 1967...

 - Charles Kabuto Kabuye - W. Kamera - Jonathan Kariara

Jonathan Kariara

Jonathan Kariara was a Kenyan poet who wrote works including "A Leopard Lives in a Muu Tree". He was also for several years the manager of Oxford University Press's branch office in Nairobi. Over the same period he ran regular workshops for writers in order to encourage and stimulate local...

 - Amin Kassam - Yusuf O. Kassam - Keorapetse Kgositsile

Keorapetse Kgositsile

Keorapetse William Kgositsile is a South African poet and political activist, and was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. He lived in exile in the United States from 1962 until 1975, the peak of his literary career...

 - Kittobbe - Mazisi Kunene

Mazisi Kunene

Mazisi Kunene was a South African poet best known for his poem Emperor Shaka the Great. While in exile from South Africa's apartheid regime, Kunene was an active supporter and organizer of the anti-apartheid movement in Europe and Africa...

 - Kojo Gyinaye Kyei - Taban Lo Liyong

Taban Lo Liyong

Taban Lo Liyong is one of Africa's well-known poets and writers of fiction and literary criticism. His political views, as well as his on-going denigration of the post-colonial system of education in East Africa, have inspired criticism and controversy since the late 1960s.His real name is...

 - Stephen Lubega - Theo Luzuka - Valente Malangatana - Ifeanyi Menkiti - Mindelense - Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali

Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali is a South African poet. He has written in both Zulu and English. He studied at Columbia University.-First Book:...

 - Agostinho Neto

Agostinho Neto

António Agostinho Neto served as the first President of Angola , leading the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the war for independence and the civil war...

 - Athru Nortje - Richard Ntiru - Atukwei Okai - Gabriel Okara

Gabriel Okara

Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bomoundi in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. In 1979, he was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.-Writing:His most famous poem is "Piano and Drums"...

 - Christopher Okigbo

Christopher Okigbo

Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was a Nigerian poet, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as the outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet and one of the major modernist writers of the twentieth century.-Early life:Okigbo was born on August...

 - Yambo Ouloguem - Frank Kobina Parkes

Frank Kobina Parkes

Frank Kobina Parkes was a Ghanaian journalist, broadcaster and poet. He was the author of one book, Songs from the Wilderness , but is widely anthologised and is perhaps best known for his poem African Heaven, which echoes the title of Carl Van Vechten's controversial 1926 novel, Nigger Heaven, and...

 - Okot p'Bitek

Okot p'Bitek

Okot p'Bitek was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for Song of Lawino, a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wishes everything to be westernised...

 - Lenrie Peters

Lenrie Peters

Lenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters ) was a Gambian surgeon, novelist, and poet.-Background:Peters was born in Bathurst to Lenrie Ernest Ingram Peters and Kezia Rosemary. Lenrie Sr. was a Sierra Leone Creole of West Indian or black American origin. Kezia Rosemary was a Gambian Creole of Sierra Leonean...

 - Rabérivelo - Isaac Rammopo - Jorge Rebelo - Arnaldo Santos - L. S. Senghor - Onésimo Silveira

Onésimo Silveira

-Biography:As a young poet, Silveira was one of the most prominent critiques of the literary elite in Cape Verde. Silveira was associated with the views o f the Claridade group, and argued in favour of an African cultural identity of the islands....

 - Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...

 - J.-B. Tati-Loutard - Bahadur Tejani - B. S. Tibenderana - Enoch Tindimwebwa - Kalu Uka - Tchicaya U Tam'si

Tchicaya U Tam'si

Tchicaya U Tam'si was a Congolese author. His official name is Gérald-Félix Tchicaya; his artist name means small paper that speaks for a country in Kikongo.-Life:...

 - Okogbule Wonodi