Song of an Alien is a collection of some of the poems I have written in the period of twelve years. It covers a variety of themes ranging from romance to pain, from ecstasy to soul matters, and from political to social issues, in all their complexities. The style employed in my work is what I call the Charsian Poetry, which I have acquired over a passage of close to ten years. It is a mixture of rhyme and blank in free verse. Charsian Poetry is the exposition of reality. Surrealism has its own place, but a good poem is an input to what transpires in the day to day lives of human beings. It is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added.

I love poetry. At the university a group of us came together and formed a poetry club. Charles Calder, a Scottish professor of literature and language and a friend (to who this book is dedicated), was a huge influence on my development and appreciation of poetry. In 2000 Charles and I directed Elizabethan drama for the British Council and influenced a young generation of poets. I hope that everyone reading these poems will enjoy them the way I enjoyed writing them.

The book is divided into five sections referred to as “Books.” Each Book has a number of poems related thematically. Book One is quintessentially romance. Book Two is a spontaneous reaction to lost love, memory and hope. Book Three contains poems dealing with our duty to state, to human rights and, to one another. Book Four is a long narrative poem addressed to the Aushi tribe of Zambia. It is a celebration of libido and the beauty of womanhood. Book Five contains forty songs of an alien, a symbolic character who reflects on moral, political and cultural matters.


An alien, a foreigner, from elsewhere alienated from his own people, his kind, his color, his race; alienated in mind and in deed, isolated from the support and the sympathy of those he is familiar with.