Where the Angolans Are Playing Football: New and Selected Poems

by Landeg White

For a number of years now Landeg White's poetry has been virtually unavailable. This new collection should help overcome that problem. The scope in this collection is broad, and brings with it various flavors of the "exotic" that mark White out as individual, and indeed unique among poets from Wales. But these flavors are not mere local color. He has been assimilated within the cultural scenes of various African and Caribbean countries and understands the political situations there. And his poems about his new home of Portugal display a manifest and hard-won interest in everything from cuisine to literature to the environment. This is a book of journeys, of memorable encounters, of familial duties in foreign places. It's a carefully crafted collection by a writer who believes in the importance of rhyme and rhythm. Form—relaxed but present—is precious to White. His rhyme schemes and sometimes traditional cadences illustrate a poet in tight control of his material and muse. Above all, the poems have a marvelous accessibility.