Review
A fine collection of free verse; exuberant and thoughtful. Serious and moral; angry but also loving and compassionate. --international Proverse Prize (2009) Judges
Jeje sees the gleam revealed within the grime: his titular smoked pearl evocative of this interplay of light and dark. For tarnished things must once have been precious, and though Jeje writes of wasted days, he recognises the briefness, the glory of the blaze. … But for all that Jeje sees -- the injustice, the silence and the blame -- these darknesses of the human soul are not total: the night ends, hope dawns. --Viki Holmes, Preface. (Author of miss moon's class)
Jeje's gaze swivels from the intensely private to the trans-continentally public, but he remains ever a self-confessed jack swinger of verbs, offering us luscious, amorous nouns. Lustillusion. Despairconfusion. This profusion of sights and sounds is tender, scintillating, thought provoking. Priceless. --Xu Xi (Author of Habit of a Foreign Sky and Evanescent Isles)
Jeje sees the gleam revealed within the grime: his titular smoked pearl evocative of this interplay of light and dark. For tarnished things must once have been precious, and though Jeje writes of wasted days, he recognises the briefness, the glory of the blaze. … But for all that Jeje sees -- the injustice, the silence and the blame -- these darknesses of the human soul are not total: the night ends, hope dawns. --Viki Holmes, Preface. (Author of miss moon's class)
Jeje's gaze swivels from the intensely private to the trans-continentally public, but he remains ever a self-confessed jack swinger of verbs, offering us luscious, amorous nouns. Lustillusion. Despairconfusion. This profusion of sights and sounds is tender, scintillating, thought provoking. Priceless. --Xu Xi (Author of Habit of a Foreign Sky and Evanescent Isles)
Product Description
Smoked Pearl chronicles observations and experiences in Hong Kong, Canada and Africa, and was long-listed for the inaugural International Proverse Prize for unpbulished writing in 2009.
About the Author
Born in the United States of Nigerian and Kenyan parents in the early 1970s, Akin Jeje continuously writes multicultural experience in verse. Raised in diverse locations around the world from Lagos, Nigeria; London, England; and London, Ontario; to Calgary, Alberta, Canada; and Petersham, Massachusetts, USA, Akin Jeje now lives in Hong Kong where he works as a primary school English teacher. Educated in Canada, he is the graduate of four universities: The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada (BA Sociology 1994); The University of Calgary (BA English 1996); The University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario (MA 2001) and York University in Toronto (B. Ed. Primary/Junior, 2005). An active poet and spoken-word performer -- in Canada since the early 1990s, and in Hong Kong since 2006 -- Jeje's works have been published and featured in both Canada and Hong Kong.
