Otherwise Everything Goes on

Len Verwey.
Otherwise Everything Goes on.

 

There is, in Len Verwey’s Otherwise Everything Goes On, a quiet and

meditative quality that belies the cacophony of psychic and emotional noises he is tapping into as a writer. We read these poems slowly—guided through themes that range from domestic complications to larger geopolitical and historical subjects—

by a man who has seen and experienced things from which most of us have been saved. Verwey’s tidy stanzas, his carefully selected diction, and his capacity to create a lyric gracefulness in his poetry are all indications of his necessary and urgent contribution to African poetry.

—Kwame Dawes