On the making of African literatures

MANUSCRIPTS AND SONGS. LETTERS AND ARCHIVAL SCRAPS. Inscriptions and book collections. Maps, machines, and crude oil. Each of the essays in this special issue looks to get a handle on an author, text, or set of texts by taking hold of something solid, tangible, sensuous. In his essay on Christopher Okigbo, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma attends to the poet’s compositional practice with an ear to his passion for music. Rachel Bower combs through editorial archives and correspondence to examine the ways in which Nigerian poetry has been made by anthologies. Asha Rogers re-reads Richard Rive’s short story ‘The Bench’ after looking into the author’s personal library...