Afrika! is an imaginary space, a 'k' and an exclamation mark away from the processes, histories and conflicts that this, Adam Schwartzman's second collection, takes for its subject. It is a space that is at once estranging and, with its wily appropriations, home ground for the citizen of the English language. Above all, in projecting 'the great out-there' into one fictive universe, Afrika! eschews personality and vigorously re-affirms community of descent, inheritance and association -- as the source of authority, both poetic and political. 

By Adam Schwartzman

Poetry, Publish by Carcanet Press