A collection of serial poems, Think of Lampedusa addresses the 2013
shipwreck that killed 366 Africans attempting to migrate secretly
to Lampedusa, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. The
crossing from North Africa to this island and other Mediterranean
way stations has become the most dangerous migrant route in the
world. Interested in what is producing such epic displacement,
Josué Guébo's poems combine elements of history and mythology.
Guébo considers the Mediterranean not only as a literal space
but also as a space of expectation, anxiety, hope, and anguish for
migrants. He meditates on the long history of narratives
and bodies trafficked across the Mediterranean Sea. What did it—and
what does it—connect and separate? Whose sea is it? Ultimately he
is searching for what motivates a person to become part of
what he calls a "seasonal suicide epidemic." This translation of
Guébo's Songe à Lampedusa, winner of the Tchicaya U Tam'si Prize
for African Poetry, is a searing work from a
major African poet.
