Christmas in Africa, by Jeni Couzyn

Every once in a while a poet arrives who can speak with equal force both to the poetry enthusiast and to the ordinary person. Jeni Couzyn is such a poet. Her work has been widely praised as authentic, relevant and disturbing; it has been praised for its social concern and its poignant clarity; above all it has been celebrated for its direct and honest utterance, its tough-minded and yet sensitive tackling of the problems and pleasures of the world in which we all live.

Christmas in Africa, with its superb handling of narrative, its subtle use of lyrical meditation and its strikingly inventive transformation of science-fiction themes, is an authoritative and deeply moving book of dems that places her as one of the most vital and most rewarding of ling poets.