Christmas in Africa

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. 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 poems that places her as one of the most vital and most rewarding of living poets.