GAMWRITERS

Kora Land, Tijan’s third publication, was published by Three Continents Press in Collorado, USA, in 1989. It is a collection of 25 poems with 48 pages.. “I consider myself to be a griot flying over the Gambian land, but seeing it in its interrelation with other lands”. Tijan expresses a strong attachment to his motherland and seems to reflect on its cultural diversity and complexity.

Distant my land, but
Pure the fixation
My heart-and-vien land
My diastole and systole

David Dorsey of Clark Atlanta University, in his review of Kora Land in World Literature Today, wrote “It (the book) notes in personal relationships such as spouse, grandparent, host, and guest the enerving trivia and difficulties which dilute the preponderant enduring purposes of reward. It celebrates the grandeurs and intricacies of both nature and society in specified locations (mainly Banjul). Often iy marks the meanness of spirit inherent in so many of Africa’s capitulations to westernisation.”

‘My recent poetry is more deliberate perhaps more complex in its use of symbolisim and imagery, more preoccupied with enduring themes: “roots”, “memory”, “family”, “relationship with elders and ancestors”, - perhaps a movement more towards personal.’ Tijan Sallah