AIDS, a poem by Barolong Seboni, Botswana*.
how cruel
these modern times…
we make love
in ignorance
and at birth
a terrible
new death
is born
*Barolong Seboni was born in Kanye, Botswana in 1957. He did his MA in English Literature at University of Wisconsin, USA. Seboni has published several works of poetry and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean and Setswana. He has also published and edited multiple works as well as recited his poetry in Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, India, England, Scotland, Ireland, Colombia and the USA.
He is co-founder of the University of Botswana Writers’ Workshop and the Writers’ Association of Botswana. He was poet-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library in 1993, and Visiting Writer of the University of Iowa’s International Writers’ Program in 2003. Seboni is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Botswana.
Credit for poem: Prairie Schooner, USA.
Click on the clip below to listen to Barolong reading one of his poems, Mall Gaborone:
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