In eel on reef, award-winning writer Uche Nduka challenges every expectation of an African poet. His unique voice is a heady amalgam of Christopher Okigbo, A.R. Ammons, John Ashbery, Kamau Brathwaite, and something only Uche can bring. In reading Nduka's poetry, the reader is encouraged to enjoy each instant, each image, while resisting the instinct to construct linear meaning in the poems.
Even though Nduka is acutely aware of his landscape and the politics of his world as an African poet, he knows that while writing out of--and sometimes against--a tradition that seems bent on didacticism, he is also unable to ignore the rituals of lament and protest that one associates with that tradition.