As Long as Trees Take Root in the Earth and Other Poems

As Long as Trees Take Root in the Earth is the first English-language release of poems by Alain Mabanckou. The volume includes two collections by the Congolese poet as well as an essay that critiques contemporary Francophone literary culture and the cronyism of the French publishing world, and advocates instead for a poetry rooted in inspiration that “simultaneously belongs to and is able to dissociate itself from humankind.” This poetic credo is reflected in Mabanckou’s verse, in which “memory climbs back up /the craggy paths of the past /submerged in my veins / of a migratory bird.” For the poet, memories of childhood are suffused with longing for a distant homeland, and for a time when poetry itself was in greater abundance. 

The dense imagery of these poems, which lack titles and punctuation, is rooted in nature, filled with rivers, hills, and lantana fields, while also bearing the imprint of human aggression:

the homeland’s red soil
puts up with being defiled
by the soldiers’ mob.

The poems in this collection expose the high toll of violence in Africa, where wars have “wounded the ventricles / of the homeland.” At the same time, these poems shine a light on a world that is not so much forgotten as it is displaced, a world in which poetry breathes with life.