"Frank M. Chipasula comes to us with rich language and a bursting, compassionate heart. I have seldom encountered poetry which expresses so much pain as his reports of monstrous state atrocities in Southern Africa in Whispers in the Wings. His vision is full of righteous rage and its power is overwhelming in such poems as 'A Hanging' and 'A Grain of Salt'." - Adrian Mitchell FRANK M. CHIPASULA is a Malawian poet, editor and fiction writer, born on 16 October 1949. He holds a B.A. (with Credit) from the University of Zambia, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Brown University, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies from Yale University and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Brown University. Currently an Associate Professor and Judge William Holmes Cook Professor of Black American Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, he has also taught at Howard University, Tamkang University in Tamsui, Taiwan, University of Nebraska at Omaha, St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, as well as Brown and Yale Universities. He also worked as English Editor for NECZAM Ltd., the former national publishers of Zambia in Lusaka and, as an undergraduate student at the University of Malawi, he freelanced on the M.B.C. (Malawi Broadcasting Corporation) in Blantyre, Malawi. Chipasula’s first book, Visions and Reflections (1972), was a pioneering work in English by a Malawian poet and paved the way for O Earth, Wait for Me (1984) and Nightwatcher, Nightsong (1986). He has also edited the following ground-breaking anthologies of African poetry: When My Brothers Come Home: Poems from Central and Southern Africa (Wesleyan University Press, 1985), (with Stella) The Heinemann Book of African Women’s Poetry (Heinemann 1995) and Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry (forthcoming). His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, newspapers and anthologies in Africa, Europe, the USA and Asia in English, French, Spanish and Chinese. |
