Polo Kouman / Polo Speaks

A finalist for the Grand Prix Littraire dAfrique Noire and a winner of the Rotary-PEN Club International Award for Poetry, Henri-Michel Yrs original bilingual collection stages a dialogue between the language of the colonizer and that of the colonized. Told through the voices of the protagoniststhe Future, or Whats-to-Come, and Polo, a young man from the streets of Abidjanthe poems originally appeared in French and Nouchi, a new language that originated in Cte dIvoire in the 1970s.This exciting English-language translation by Todd Fredson offers multiple versions of each poem: an English translation of the original French; a version of the Nouchi in which only the French words are translated into English; and another mixed translation that expands on the previous by offering commentary on the linguistic history and possibilities of the Nouchi. Additionally, the book includes the original Nouchi and French versions. The result makes the poetic medium of the original collection visible and enfolds the reader in the process of translation, of coming to meaning. Readers are privy to dimensions of West African life and thought that are often obscured by colonizer languages. Polo kouman / Polo Speaks is a remarkable and complex work that explores the relationship between language and belonging and how language itself can restrictor liberatethe imagination.