Monique Kwachou is a 23-year-old Cameroonian Romanticist poet. Kwachou is inspired by a range of artists, including Maya Angelou, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and JP Clark.  Her latest collection of verse, A Million Nights More to Go will be published under Coal Publishing in April 2013.

Coal Publishing seeks donations so they can ensure women of colour are published globally. Women of Colour only constitute 0-5% of those published in almost all countries across the globe.  Coal Publishing began with the passion of wanting to regenerate the spirit of women, understanding that art and the written word is essential in giving voice to what women have previously been too frightened or ashamed to name. We need women of colour writing, creating, and telling truths that open up the world like eternal summers. Click here to donate any amount to this indie publisher of women of colour.

“In Post-Battle Cries Kwachou conjures an ironic landscape where colonialism has left its scarring on the psyche of an Africa who has now internalised its own oppression. Here, Kwachou is neither formulaic or distant. Her verse is pristine and consciously poised, in the way of neo-classical poets Jessie Redmon Fauset and Gwendolyn B. Bennett.” Kamaria Muntu, poet, critic and publisher.

Post-Battle Cries

Have you heard the cries?
They are not loud but muted
Barely there, unless you care to listen
Carefully bend your ear…
And if you close your eyes,
You’d see the silent tears that fall freely
Corroding ridges down the cheeks
Of patriots once so bold
Tears of pity, for us, for themselves
Tears of regret that they had ever fought
That they had ever thought things could be better
For who would have known that in removing the colonizer our own would continue the rape?
Or that franchise once fought for with blood would be so easily abused, ignored?
Who would believe that when granted their chance
women would condescend to be walked on again, and yet again?
And so the patriots cry, the matriarchs weep

You could hear them if,
If you would listen