Old Friend, We Made This For You

Author: Yannick Marshall & Yemi Aganga | ISBN: 1551303310 : 9781551303314 | Format: Paperback | Size: 140x205mm | Pages: 122 | Weight: .168 Kg. | Published: Canadian Scholar’s Press – December 2007 | Availability: In Print | Subjects: Poetry texts & anthologies

This collection of poetry

is a plea and a gift from two black youths to Africans of the continent and the Diaspora. We sought to explore the broadest themes and most salient of issues facing Africans. Through these poems and essays we offer our views, ideas, questions, and art first and foremost to our people, our ‘Old friends’.

“Old Friend, we made this for you” is our contribution as two, young, black, ready poets to the discourse on Africa and Africa’s redemption. Marshall and Aganga met in secondary school in Botswana. Shortly after sharing poems and ideas they began working on a project that reflected a Pan-Afrikan vision from both the African and African Diaspora’s perspective. That project evolved into a collection of poems called “Old Friend We Made This For You” . Olayemi Aganga born in Nigeria and living most of his life in Botswana has a unique understanding of the issues facing the continent. Living in Sub-Saharan Africa he has witnessed the regions plight with Aids, violence and poverty and has first-hand experience of what it means to be an expatriate Nigerian in Southern Africa. As such his poems are well rooted in the politics, culture and the urban experience on the continent. Yannick Marshall born in Canada to black Caribbean parents has a firm understanding of the Caribbean immigrant experience and what it means to be black and a descendant of slaves in North America. As a member of the black conscious African Diaspora his poems reflect the slave and post-slavery experience and the slave’s mystic romanticism of the continent.

Yannick Marshall

is a young Afrikan poet of St. Lucian and Jamaican heritage. He lives in Toronto. He has spent much of his life in the community of Rexdale in Toronto and has also lived in Jamaica, St. Lucia, and Botswana, Africa. His poems have been published in Kola Magazine, the T-Dot Griots Anthology, Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine, and Wasafiri. He has published a collection of poetry with Nigerian poet Yemi Aganga entitled “Old Friend, We Made This for You” which George Elliot Clarke calls “the most exciting and accomplished book of mainly Canadian poetry you will read (and feel) for years.” Yannick holds a B.A. in Political Science and Caribbean Studies from the University of Toronto.

Yemi Aganga

is a young Afrikan poet/writer of Nigerian heritage and a citizen of Botswana and currently residing in South Africa where he  is proceeding with his studies at law school. He also lived in the United States for three years and in Lesotho for three years. He has been previously published in Ishmael Reeds Konch Magazine, English in Africa and Inkblots magazine. He is also featured in a collection of poetry coming out this May in Canada, co-authored with Saint Lucian/ Canadian poet Yannick Marshall entitled Old Friend We Made This For You. Yemi Aganga is also an aspiring hip-hop and house music producer.

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