Full Description
Clifton Gachagua's collection Madman at Kilifi, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, concerns itself with the immediacy of cultures in flux, cybercommunication and the language of consumerism, polyglot politics and intrigue, sexual ambivalence and studied whimsy, and the mind of a sensitive, intelligent, and curious poet who stands in the midst of it all.
Gachagua's is a world fully grounded in the postmodern Kenyan cultural cauldron, a world in which people speak with "satellite mouths," with bodies that are "singing machines," and in which the most we can do is "collide against each other." Here light is graceful, and we glow like undiscovered galaxies and shifting matter. And here as well, we find new expression in a poetry that moves as we do.
Contents
The Cartographer of Water: A Foreword by Kwame DawesCharcoal on CanvasA Slow Boat to ChinaSatelliteAt the Confucius CentrePromenadeThe Lights in ZanzibarEternally DistractedGhostwriter: A Found PoemShakaraMemorialThe Nobel Prize for MedicineOn a Terrace Balcony in AbujaAlgorithmReality TelevisionSeptemberPrinciples of VariationsOtto GrossCentral ParkDesertionNew HouseThe AnointingI Could Smell ThemLost StonesTravel GuideIt's Not the Same as When You Crush Paper FlowersA Bronze God, or a Letter on DemandBirdsImitation BodiesMy Sisters Used to Put Me in DressesUnclaimedMountainStrange MaleMerchant of FleshPlayhouse LaneLet Us Now Talk about Your Waist, SayingDancersA Benzedrine HallucinationMadman at KilifiYoungReclaiming a Beloved CityThe Ante-ChamberImagine Those Slender CigarettesConcerto of the UnconcernedGalileeA Genre of IsolationBrideTreasonCucu NjeriThe Latrine of GiardiaThe Bin"Metrosexual"Approaching Siaya
