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Tag: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

"Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is unequivocal about the uses of poetry, of her poetry—she is determined to trade in truth, in the power of experience, in the beauty of language to alarm and delight and in the challenge she willingly bears to be an instrument of witness and articulation for her people—for Africa, for women, for the lovers of poetry. In Praise Song for My Children, we encounter a poet at the height of her skills and at the height of her clarity about the world and what things must be spoken into it. But we are blessed to be given an insight into how she arrives at this place of power—it is a remarkable selection of some of the most urgent poems to emerge out of the wars of Liberia. Here is work of incredible joy, deepest lamentation, and necessary hope. It is a sure testament." Artists & Reviews 

Review: Praise Song for My Children, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

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Praise Song for My Children celebrates twenty-one years of poetry by one of the most significant African poets of this century. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley guides us through the complex and intertwined highs and lows of motherhood and all the roles that it encompasses: parent, woman, wife, sister, friend. Her work is deeply personal, drawing from her own life and surroundings to convey grief, the bleakness of war, humor, deep devotion, and the hope of possibility. These poems lend an international voice to the tales of motherhood, as Wesley speaks both…

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Interview by Professor Patricia Wesley, Penn State University Interviews 

Interview: Dr. Patricia Wesley & Comrade Cherbo Geeplay

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Comrade Cherbo Geeplay was born in Pleebo, Southeastern Liberia, Western Africa, and is a Liberian and African poet whose work has appeared in many journals and publications, and was interviewed by Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to poetry? What has poetry offered to you? And what do you add to the dialogue of Liberian poetry?  I think it was in high school, I got my spark from high school. High school was instrumental, and then during the Liberian civil war too,…

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Artists & Reviews News 

Review: Jabbeh Wesley’s When The Wanderers Come Home

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When the Wanderers Come Home is a grieving love letter to Liberia, a country that contains her story By Bidisha SK Mamata In Patricia Jabbeh Wesley’s powerful When the Wanderers Come Home, the search for a place of arrival, self-recognition and remembrance continues, but doesn’t find a resting place. Wesley was born in Liberia but settled in America; this pained and poignant collection focuses on her return to the former. She traces relatives, interviews women war survivors and figuratively and literally searches through the detritus of violence, poverty and natural…

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Editor's Desk News 

Kenya: Meeting Celebrated Liberian Poet-Scholar Wesley

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By Khainga O’okwemba Prof Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, is a phenomenal woman. She’s a literary giant. She’s a leading African woman literary scholar and writer. She visited our shores, met students and their teachers at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and at the University of Nairobi, before leaving for Kisii for the third edition of the Kistrech International Poetry Festival. Even after living and teaching in the USA – Penn State University, Altoona – for 24 years, Patricia still retains the African character in tone and sensibility. She’s…

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Politics 

A Nation That Cannot Produce Its Own Literature And Art Is A Lost Nation.

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By Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley I read a very beautiful literary critical review in which the author, a scholar I truly respect said that I am “the most renowned African woman poet in the world today,” and you can disagree with him, I do not care, and this is not my point here. I am glad he thinks so, and I am honored he wrote that. But here is my point. If I am going to be the poet that I want to be before I die someday, I will…

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Interviews Society Arts & Leisure 

11 Questions: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Poet

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      Wesley [PhD] is Associate Professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University and a Liberian writer with four books of poetry under her belt.  Jabbeh Wesley’s fifth book “In Monrovia, the River Visits the Sea,” is now in print. It is a children’s book recently published by One Moore Book Publishers, Jan. 2013. 1. How well received have your poetry books been? It depends on who you are talking about. Outside Liberia, my books have been very well received, particularly, in the US and outside, in countries…

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