There Where It's So Bright in Me

Tanella Boni is an Ivorian poet, novelist, and professor of philosophy at the UniversitÉ FÉlix HouphouËt-Boigny, formerly the University of Abidjan (Cocody). She has published numerous critical and literary works in French and won the 2009 Antonio Viccaro International Poetry Prize from UNESCO for her body of work. She is the author of The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn (Nebraska, 2018). Todd Fredson is a poet, critic, and translator of Francophone West African literature and poetry, including Tanella Boni’s The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn (Nebraska, 2018). Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright.

• Foreword by Chris AbaniTranslator’s Note: At Exile’s TerminusWords Are My Preferred WeaponsThe Path of Ephemeral LivesMemory of a WomanWhat Needs to Be SaidMight Take the Dreams as WellThose Who Are Afraid of Naked WomenThe Ladder and the Spark

“Meditative, precise, and abundant with mystery, Tanella Boni’s poems are alive with the breath of the world. They are fierce, prayerful, experimental, and lamenting-filled with movement, the songs of small things, ‘the time of sobbing the long blues,’ her ‘woman’s skin’ and ‘woman’s memory.’ Todd Fredson’s translations bring such gorgeous and complex lucidity from Boni’s French into English.”-Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria “The negotiation in language, politics, history, gender, and identity is at the heart of this extraordinary translation of Tanella Boni’s poetry. . . . [Translator] Todd Fredson is becoming a reliable guide across the borders of language that impede the conversations that should be going on between African poets and readers, and poets and readers from around the world. He is doing so with care and sensitivity. Tanella Boni has published prolifically in French. We welcome such translations for what they give to us, for the way they expand the journeys of our collective selves.”-from Chris Abani’s foreword