Echoes of My African Mind - GRIOT is a poetic journey across landscapes both internal and ancestral. Told in four sweeping movements-Personal Odyssey, Love, Lost & Found, Griot, and Vignettes of War-this collection bears witness to a mind shaped by longing and rebirth, memory and silence, resistance and tenderness.
These poems inhabit the space between cosmic wonder and earthly ache, threading the personal with the political, the spiritual with the tactile. In verses that echo like remembered names, Alf crafts a lyrical record of lives carried and lives forgotten, of home as a question, and identity as an unfolding. The speaker walks "a while" in his own shoes but invites us, too, to feel the path beneath our feet-whether on a Sunday morning in Harare or lost in a storm of arrested departures.
At its heart, Echoes of My African Mind is a griot's offering: a chorus of remembrance, truth-telling, and sacred imagining. The poet reflects on the legacy of stolen names, fractured families, and silenced histories-but never without hope, never without the fierce beauty of survival. In poems like In the Ship's Hold, I Lost My Name, and The Circle Is Complete, the reader is not simply observing history but carrying it forward.
Through the chapter Love, Lost & Found, we're brought face to face with tenderness and absence, passion and aftermath. Whether in quiet meditations like I Remember You or charged introspections like Perfect Release, the poet navigates the fragile landscapes of desire and memory-where intimacy is both balm and ache.
The final movement, Vignettes of War, wrestles with the lingering ghosts of colonialism, displacement, and political grief. Here, Alf's voice turns fierce and solemn, documenting not just war-torn lands but war-torn psyches, and the dream-still alive-of an African future shaped by truth, not trauma.
This collection is not just a gathering of poems; it is a living archive of emotional histories and cultural reclamation. With language that is precise yet expansive, aching yet uplifting, Alf composes a song for those in search of home, of voice, of belonging.
Whether you are drawn to questions of identity, entranced by lyrical storytelling, or seeking a deeper reflection on love, exile, and return, Echoes of My African Mind - GRIOT will leave its mark on your soul. This is poetry not just to be read-but to be remembered.
