And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
- And did those feet, William Blake

torsdag 30. november 2017

The Tenderness Manifesto - a poem by Mbella Sonne Dipoko



As the month draws to its close and we are on the verge of the Advent period and - in academia - the hectic scramble of tying loose ends together before the Christmas break, I'm presenting to you this poem by anglophone Cameroonian poet Mbella Sonne Dipoko. The poem comes from his poetry collection Black and White in love, printed in Heinemann's African Writer Series. It is a powerful,  exhortation of love of humanity and love of culture, and can be appreciated both on its own but also in light of its age when several countries in Africa were in the process of shedding their colonial status, and when the political games between the ideologies of Capitalism and Communism played into the geopolitical scenes across the African continent. But most importantly, it is a powerful poetic manifesto which at its very core is as timeless as poetry itself.








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