Product details
- ISBN 9780826500038
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 15 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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We Are Still in the Fort is a curated selection of about seventy poems by Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy, divided into three sections spanning the quotidian, the amorous, and the political. The first part, “‘I Swipe Their String of Fish’: Poems of Mombasan Society,” features his often satirical commentary on daily life in Mombasa. The second part, “‘Take Your Misery With You’: Poems of Love and Marriage,” focuses on his psychologically sensitive observations on the volatility of love, marriage, and illicit affairs. The last part, “‘We Are Still in the Fort’: Poems of War and State,” includes epigrammatic critiques of local political leaders and a series of anti-imperialist poems defending Mombasa’s independence against the invading Omani Empire. The volume also features contextual materials on Muyaka and the context of Swahili poetry, a translator’s note, and introductions for each of the three sections.
Richard Prins is a lifelong New Yorker who has lived, worked, studied, and recorded music in Dar es Salaam. He currently teaches creative and expository writing at Queens College. His own poetry has appeared in dozens of publications such as Gulf Coast, jubilat, and Ploughshares, and his creative nonfiction was selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2024. He is the author of the Birdhouse Prize–winning chapbook We May Eat Fruit and Brain Flavor: A Lyric History of Swahili Hip Hop, as well as the translator of the Africanfuturist novel They Are Us, for which he received a 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship.
