Raza Ali Hassan, poet, Dept. of English, University of Colorado

"Obi Nwakanma's soaring, lyrical collection of poems, Birthcry, is the perfect riposte to Auden's "Not to be born is the best for man". Occasioned by the arrival of a new-born child, the poet reassures not only the world in which the child has been born, but the body and the womb itself."