Requiem, Rwanda

“As if breaking through the distracting cacophony of the outsider’s voice, of history, of landscape, of curiosities, there come these terrible grace moments of song from the voices of Rwandans— from their memories, their hauntings, their rituals of forgetting and remembering—and in them we are reminded of the blunt truth of a human tragedy that defies language. Apol holds these moments as sacred, and in so doing she, too, becomes a witness.”
—KWAME DAWES, author of Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems

As if breaking through the distracting cacophony of the outsider’s voice, of history, of landscape, of curiosities, there come these terrible grace moments of song from the voices of Rwandans—from their memories, their hauntings, their rituals of forgetting and remembering—and in them we are reminded of the blunt truth of a human tragedy that defies language. Apol holds these moments as sacred, and in so doing she, too, becomes a witness.
—KWAME DAWES, author of Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected Poems

This is a book like no other: a small collection of remarkable poems, yes, but also an encapsulated history, a treatise on the healing power of story, a guide that will serve as a model on how to engage, respectfully, with cultures different from our own. Laura Apol is one of the most courageous writers I know. Her poems are heavy with the terrible history of genocide, but they are able to carry that weight because of her clarity, her humility and integrity, her poetic grace, and her belief, not easily gained, in the redemptive power of language. I love this book, and I applaud her talent and bravery. She makes me believe in poetry again.
—LORNA CROZIER, Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria, and author of The Wrong Cat

Laura Apol’s poems resonate like tuning forks with their grief and anguish. She has perfect pitch. Apol has written the best poems about genocide since Paul Celan. “Milkfugue” is a masterpiece.
—GREGORY H. STANTON, President, Genocide Watch

In Mata (April), the month of milk, Rwanda became bloody. In this collection, Laura Apol succeeds in capturing the horror that devastated Rwanda more than twenty years ago, thereby making the Rwandan story legible to the wider world. In insisting on the healing aspect of writing, her poems demonstrate poignantly that to write is also to fight for life.
—EVARISTE NTAKIRUTIMANA, Professor, the University of Rwanda, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Chief Editor, Synergies Afrique des Grands Lacs