Veteran writer and publisher Egidio Mpanga has reappeared with a collection of poems titled Lilies of the Heart.
Mpanga, who has published books for several writers, is out with his second book, which is packaged with a mix of old and new poems.
“Putting together Lilies of the Heart has been an exciting and fulfilling experience as it meant a journey back to where I stopped when I last published a similar genre, Sketches for No One in 2008,” he said.
Mpanga said that selecting the title of the book was a difficult part for him “because of the variegated nature of the emotions that the poems portray”.
“It was not easy for me to find the dominant theme, which I could use to coin a title. My initial assessment has been that most of the early and middle-year poems are merely of infatuation but did inspire and arouse the writer in me,” he said.
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The book has both long and short poems and, in one of the short poems, Mpanga writes about ‘Born Free’, and he goes: “Born free, born too free, born for freebies, born for free beers, born for jeers, born for tears, as nothing gets down the ears, born for free tears.”
Pen Malawi President Alfred Msadala describes Lilies of the Heart as beautiful and that it is about dreams and passions.
“The work of poetry comes fully bloomed with three senses fully exhibited: the colours of life maturely visible; the scent from the setting smelled from afar; and the texture of the plotting fabric well felt,” Msadala said.
Mpanga’s book comes as a number of writers have launched their books, the recent one being 19 year- old University of Malawi student Monalisa Alfonso , who launched a poetry anthology titled Momental Memories at Kwaharaba Art Gallery and Café in Blantyre.
