Professor Alobwed’Epie, novelist – University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon

“In A Basket of Kola Nuts we encounter a poet preoccupied with the surrealism Chinua Achebe had highlighted in his novel Things Fall Apart. In the novel the kola nut is portrayed as life-giving and therefore a sacred entity amongst the Igbos. Bongasu takes a step further. He laces together all the countries in which kola nuts are produced and in a graphic presentation of his poetry he compresses history, politics, sociology, philosophy and geography in one notch. We see the meanings of the poems intertwined with the shape of the poems. Where the kola baskets are overturned they build into pyramids of hope and despair but with hope superseding. Where they are upright, they uphold the camaraderie kola nuts engender – the poet’s substratum. As such, the poetry is grotesque, astute, enriching and fascinating.”