A Phial of Passing Memories

James Yeku's second collection lingers on a poetics of elsewhere — poems that evoke various memories through shifting sceneries that record the everyday and chronicle vagrant seasons. James Yeku's second collection lingers on a poetics of elsewhere, as seen through poems that evoke various memories. In A Phial of Passing Memories, the poems offer shifting sceneries that record the everyday and chronicle vagrant seasons. “Whether portraying the smell of rain on dry earth or the tops of hills in the fall, we are in the presence of a poet able to see reality with a child’s clarity and present it with a scholar’s diction. The majority of Yékú’s poems, however, are about arrivals and departures—including births and deaths—the self in exile, and life’s elusive meaning. Occasionally celebratory but mostly elegiac, these poems are deeply existential in ways that make this reviewer think of Camus’ ‘Myth of Sisyphus.'” —H Nigel Thomas, author of The Voyage “In A Phial of Passing Memories, James Yékú captures the significant moments of life with arresting images that shed light on the human experience, bringing a measure of balance and confidence to his engagement with travels, nature and memory-making. Highly descriptive, this collection entertains, takes the reader on several journeys, and leads one to deep thought. It is a worthy addition to the new African diasporic literature.” —Tanure Ojaide, Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte “A Phial of Passing Memories navigates memories of moments and places experienced within the diasporic topographies. Spaces lived or visited are eloquently rekindled and reimagined.” —OLONGOAfrica