University Libraries professors establish and promote African poetry libraries

The African Poetry Book Fund (APBF), founded and directed by renowned poet and UNL Professor of English Kwame Dawes, promotes African poetry in a variety of ways, including the creation of 5 poetry libraries in African countries. University Libraries Professors Lorna Dawes and Charlene Maxey-Harris were instrumental in establishing these libraries, by creating online catalogs, authoring a manual for daily operations, creating procedures for the libraries to report back to UNL, securing book donations, and more.

The African Poetry Libraries project is one of the ways the University Libraries brokers global access to knowledge and resources. Charlene says of the initiative, “We are proud of the African Poetry Libraries project because it has expanded our reach outside of Nebraska to make a global impact on scholars and writers.”


Lorna and Kwame secured a Ford Foundation Grant to further the reach of the APBF by creating the African Poetry Digital Portal, an online index to African poetry, primary documents, and related materials. Lorna will coordinate the collections included in the index and partner with the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) to produce and manage the portal. The CDRH’s Karen Dalziel and Laura Weakly are creating the portal.

Visitors browse at the African Poetry Library-Kenya 2015

Lorna and Charlene continue to promote the African Poetry Libraries project through scholarly publications, conference presentations, and a new initiative “that develops future poets and establishes spaces for poetry readings,” Lorna continues, “it is our vision that more academic libraries will create such spaces and collections to inspire and advance African poetry.”

In celebration of April as National Poetry Month, the University Libraries is hosting several events, one that includes an APBF exhibit curated by Lorna. The exhibit offers a retrospective of the first five years of the APBF and made its debut on April 3 on the second floor of Love Library North. The exhibit opening included a special poetry reading event hosted by Kwame Dawes.

The University Libraries Diversity Committee is a co-sponsor of this exhibit and Kwame expressed that the group has, "done well by the event…Diversity enhances and enriches the intellectual capacity of our institution through excellence and innovation and this exhibit (along with our wonderful reading event) epitomizes this value perfectly.”

The exhibit will be on display until May 4 and will then make several stops in this country and abroad, including at the Library of Congress and Oxford University.