A nice review:
The first lesson of the writer is that the reader is most interested in the story that the writer is most loath to narrate. That story, that most personal of narratives, is the story that the writer is best equipped to tell. In LH&BN, Afam Akeh approaches the story of the poet persona’s exile and narrates it almost autobiographically. This title poem is an emigrant’s mea culpa to his home, and his explication to the land of his sojourn. The poet is the ‘gecko/ seeking warmth/ behind shut doors’. The trope of nostalgia is the worn coin of exilic writers but an emotion is no less valid for having been felt by millions before. Afam lends fresh ink to the exile’s vulnerabilities:
ENJOY
There is the sense in this work of an involved and inclusive poetry, revelling in the humour, play and beauty of experience but also revealing moments of heart-rending loss and unfulfilment... a sense of poetry as story, constructing meaning and plot from the connected roles and all-significant affairs of its staged players.
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