ZAKWATO & LOGLÊDOU'S PERIL

Translated by Todd Fredson. Action Books, 2023. Paperback, 224 pages. 8.25"x8.25"x0.6" 

From the press: Exhilarating, alert, and animated by both Bété oral poetics and modernist zeal, Zakwato & Loglêdou’s Peril presents two major linked poems by the late Ivorian poet Azo Vauguy, translated into English for the first time by poet and scholar Todd Fredson. Zakwato evokes the legendary figure of Zakwato, who, having slept through the massacre of his village, marches to the blacksmith to have his eyelids removed so that he might never sleep again. Loglêdou’s Peril recounts what he sees with his now sleepless eyes–a vision of a people liberated, awoken, and moving towards a future lit up by their own refulgent song.