Love Song (for Anna) by Chinua Achebe

A Mother in a Refugee Camp by Chinua Achebe

This week will feature poems by Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer who would have turned 90 this week. Achebe is best known for his debut novel, Things Fall Apart, but he also wrote quite a few poems. I'm reading from the Penguin edition of his collected poems in case you want to follow along. 

Bonus episode! So it turns out in my accounting of states still in play in the US Presidential election, I left out Alaska, which had counted all of its Election Day votes but was waiting until after the deadline to count absentee and mail-in ballots - almost 40 percent of the expected total!  Which is how you now get:

The Blue Fish by Frank Soos, the Writer Laureate of Alaska.

That's correct, Writer Laureate. The Alaska State Council of the Arts changed the name in 1996 to honor all forms of writing. 

Today's poem is part of the Poems in Place project, which looks to put poems in Alaska's state parks to enhance the natural surroundings. It's a pretty cool idea.

for grandma by Jaki Shelton Green, poet laureate of North Carolina.

Our Brother by Trapeta Mayson, the poet laureate of Philadelphia.

For a Child on Her Own by Margaret "Peggy" Rozga, the poet laureate of Wisconsin.

Quiet Moments by Heather Lang-Cassera, the poet laureate of Clark County, Nevada.

Copper and Oranges by Alberto Rios, the poet laureate of Arizona.