Collected Poems: Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi in 1930, and graduated from Ibadian University in 1953. After studying in the BBC staff school with other Commonwealth broadcasters, he worked as a radio broadcaster until 1966, when he left his post as director of external broadcasting in Nigeria during the national upheaval that led to the Biafran War. He was appointed senior research fellow at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and lectured widely abroad. From 1972 to 1975 and again from 1987 to 1988, Mr Achebe was Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has travelled widely in East and Central Africa, the USA and Brazil. Chinua Achebe has published novels, short stories, poetry, essays and children's books. His volume of poetry, Christmas in Biafra, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels, Arrow of God won the New Statesman-Jock Campbell Award, and Anthills of the Savannah was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize. He has received over thirty honorary doctorates and numerous honours from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Nigerian National Order of Merit. Mr Achebe lives with his wife in New York, where they teach at Bard College. They have four children and three grandchildren.

• Table of Contents In Lieu of a Preface: A Parable Prologue 1966 Benin Road Mango Seedling Pine Tree in Spring The Explorer Agostinho Neto Poems About War The First Shot A Mother in a Refugee Camp Christmas in Biafra (1969) Air Raid Biafra, 1969 An "If" of History Remembrance Day A Wake for Okigbo After a War Poems Not About War Love Song (for Anna) Love Cycle Question Answer Beware, Soul Brother NON-commitment Generation Gap Misunderstanding Knowing Robs Us Bull and Egret Lazarus Vultures Public Execution in Pictures Gods, Men, and Others Penalty of Godhead Those Gods Are Children Lament of the Sacred Python Their Idiot Song The Nigerian Census Flying Epilogue He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not Dereliction We Laughed at Him Notes

'There was a writer named Chinua Achebe, in whose company the prison walls fell down.' Nelson Mandela 'The father of African literature in the English language and undoubtedly one of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century.' Caryl Phillips 'Chinua Achebe is gloriously gifted with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent.' Nadine Gordimer 'He taught us a way of integrating what we know from being African with what we've become - hybrids of a kind.' Nuruddin Farah 'A magical writer - one of the greatest of the twentieth century.' Margaret Atwood