This collection of verse from Africa was the first to be selected by Wole Soyinka. It is an imaginative wide-ranging, personal choice. It includes the work of both established and new poets from the four corners of the continent. The majority of poems were originally written in English but there are translations from Swahili, Yoruba, Protuguese and French. My contribution is a poem entitled to a bed-bug.

Published by Heinmann Educational Books, 1975

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What do you remember about your childhood? Were you ever abandoned or battered or abused? Did you experience denial of food, health, shelter or education? Or did you witness others who did? There are thousands of children in the world who experience these horrors and many more.

Until international attention was focused in a draft convention on the Rights of Child during the International convention on the Rights of the Child during the International Year of the Child in 1979, many literate people of the world were in darkness about the abuses of child right. The fact is that unless directly involved, many adults take child survival and development for granted. How many of us consciously and in some active way, realize that the management of childhood of even one child is beyond the capability of its parents?

In an effort to reduce this ignorance, many regions and countries of the world participated in official fora organized to do something about the plight of the child.

Tender memories is an entertaining and thought-provoking collection of poems and short stories that embrace the theme of growing up. Most of the stories have been told from the point of view of the child persona. The reader will find the stories painfully refreshing and illuminating.

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