Friday Poem – ‘When it Rains, I Think of You’ by Eric Ngalle Charles

~ Seren Books

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘When it Rains, I Think of You’ by Eric Ngalle Charles from his new collection Homelands.

This cover shows a painting of a young African boy wearing a blue robe tied around his waist and an oversized black hat standing in front of a building. The text reads: Homelands, Eric Ngalle Charles.

In Homelands Eric Ngalle Charles draws on his early life raised by the matriarchs of Cameroon, being sent to Moscow by human traffickers, and finding a new home in Wales. Rich in tone, subject and emotion, Charles’ poetry moves between the present and the past, between Africa and Europe, and between despair and hope. It discovers that historical injustices now play out in new forms, and that family tensions are as strong as the love within a family. Despite the difficulties Charles has faced, Homelands contains poems of fondness, warmth and humour and, as he returns to Cameroon to confront old ghosts, forgiveness. 

When it Rains, I Think of You Farzana, and if you will return alive or dead from that awful place, the Al-Jawiywah prison, meeting point for migrants and traffickers. I think of you there, where today, a quarrel brews: to entertain themselves the guards throw one toothbrush and paste and watch inmates fight for it. A mad woman paces up, then down, an old man sits and stares. Farzana is pregnant, skeletal, she wants to leave this makeshift jail where migrants starve and soldiers make merry over rum with traffickers. When it rains I think of you, Farzana, and if you will return.

Homelands is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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On the 27th May Eric will be reading from Homelands as part of the Hay Festival Schools Programme. Tickets for the Hay Festival main programme go on sale today at 12pm.

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