NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
NNOROM AZUONYE: THE BRIDGE SELECTION
Eastern Light
60 Titmuss Ave
London
SE28 8DJ
UK
ISBN 1 905126 46 8
£5.95 [US$9]
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This page last updated: 11th December 2007. 		NNOROM AZUONYE: THE BRIDGE SELECTION

Nnorom Azuonye looks at the human condition through the prism of Africa, thus using at the same time the eyes of an insider and an outsider. In AN AFRICAN TALE:

	I tell the story of a people brain-washed
	Showing off political and social suits made by alien tailors
By writing about a society which us non-Africans have little real knowledge of he is able to universalise everything and bring every society into sharp focus. In YESTERDAY, he asks:
	Oh God!
	Why have you made us able
	to scavenge at trashed chronicles
	of good times
	in bad times
	to make bad times worse?
In the 21st century it's easy to think that the lunatics have taken over the asylum, and as he says in MAD SONGS:
	But if today we resort to terrorism to fight terrorism
	who can tell us apart from them?
This is not a collection of sf poetry, yet in THEY DON'T NEED BABEL ANYMORE, he comes up with a superb image straight out of sf and shows us a whole paranoid planet:
	Hubble eyeballs God and probes the stars
	long eyes floating in space watch
	every move we make, every step we take,
	there are man-gods watching us.
Definitely a disturbing, unforgettable, thought-provoking read.

reviewer: John Francis Haines