I have crossed lands

Wearing dark crowns

Where the sun should be.

from 'Glow'

Marial Awendit dares to dream and to share his dreams, drawing us into a world of searing contrasts - fire and water, beauty and ugliness, love and rage, darkness and light, war and resistance, God and the devil. In the process he considers profound, existential questions. What is the purpose of suffering? How do we define freedom? Can hope flower from pain? Surreal images leap off the page to startle our perceptions and embed themselves in our consciousness. The poems reverberate with a haunting musicality, floating like water lilies on the Nile, pulsing like flames in the desert night.

- Marian Christie

Marial Awenditis a South Sudanese poet, essayist and songwriter, widely published in various literary magazines and anthologies.

He is the author of:

The poetry chapbook, The Night Does Not Drown Us, Babishai-Niwe Poetry Foundation

His debut poetry collection, Keeping the Sun Secret, Mwanaka Media and Publishing Ltd.

Marial won the 2016 South Sudan Youth Talent Awardfor the category of Best Poet

and the 2018 Babishai-Niwe Poetry Award.

This collection of poems journals the poet's transition from darkness into light. The author talks of his coming into the world many years after his birth. Such conversion is what he calls a brewing dawn. The resurrection from despair into hope, faith in God and arrangements for a journey into a brighter light, are wielded by the poems. The author tells his story using various themes, in a familiar manner, yet some of the pieces spell the exact environs of the author. Some poems carry the writer's attempts to brighten the way towards hope, for others.