I am a bird. I often fly too high into the sky, get too close to the sun. My wings melt, and I crash into the sea. Perhaps I drown, salty water filling my lungs. But I always rise again. Eternal.

(Our) enemy is really ‘the numbers’ in any situation, where our voice is drowned by those who outnumber us, who make us feel bad about who we are, how we feel, especially how we put so much into question, and seek depth and intensity in the way we engage with the world—something that often ends up irritating everyone around us.

And living well in a world that colludes against life is hard work. And that is what makes writing poems hard—not the writing itself but the conditions I am trying to write within.

My people (Bakongo) are known to be the witches and wizards of Angola, the jokes make me smile, I´m from a lineage of people who deal with the spirit. And it makes me glad because Jaliya is a celebration of spirit and magic.

My people (Bakongo) are known to be the witches and wizards of Angola, the jokes make me smile, I´m from a lineage of people who deal with the spirit. And it makes me glad because Jaliya is a celebration of spirit and magic.

Saving life is a preserve of God and I would be delighted if somehow he used one of my poems to do so. Imagine just weaving words and salvaging the breath of a whole human being. That's big!

The universal society is what I always aim at speaking to (with my poetry), that I always hope to have an impact on.

To borrow the words of a poet I deeply admire, Yusef Komunyakaa, to me Africa is a “wounded paradise” (from his poem, “Tenebrae”). I ache for a reparative future.

Africa! My Africa has failed me. It has ceased to function as a continent, failed to recognize queer bodies, and failed to provide a safe milieu for our existence as humans. Africa has no tomorrow. Africa is a vast abyss of nothingness.

When anger fried me, Death settled in my mind Roaring and teasing, I did not succumb to him. Omadang Yowasi