What can I say... This is a wonderful collection of sensitive, appropriate and very evocative African poetry. I lived in West Africa for many years and I too was moved by this intriguing continent to put my thoughts into poetry so I have a special appreciation for others who are similarly inspired. Susan is a special person with a very special perspective and she shares it well in this little book of poetry. Thank you Susan!

African Dust on the Soles of My Feet
by Susan Cook-Jahme
[self-published]

From beginning to end, this is one of the most inspiring and refreshing books of poetry I've read in a long time. The poetry is divided into three sections: Dawning; Twilight; and Solitude.

It begins with “A Wistful Ache for Africa”:

Wistful ache of the love
For the tawny plains
Surrounding highlands
That thrust up,
Touching the skies
Under hot sun clad days.

Susan next takes you through the beauty of Africa with her works: Victoria Falls; Whispering Cape Wind; African Night; Mother Nature’s Loom; African Spirit Drums; Night Noises of the Veldt; and Sunrise on Cool Sands.

She gives you an intimate look into her life with her works: For Michelle; Makiwas' All Look the Same; Jaunty Jim; The Farmer’s Children; The Old Colonial Bed; Solitude of the Bush Camp; and We Once Had A Farm In Africa.

Her bold strokes of pen about the worst of Africa ring loudly and makes your heart ache in the works: Fist of War; In the Camps: Poacher’s Message; and Victim of the African Regime.

And, Susan brings you back to the beauty and the hope she has for her land with her works: Domain of My Memories; Gandhi Told Me; Skies Over Lake Malawi; and her inclusion of A Bushman’s Song


“The day we die a soft breeze shall blow
& wipe out our footprints in the sand.
When the Wind grows silent,
Who will tell the timelessness…?
That once we walked this way
…In the Dawn of Time”


Each of her works brings alive what Africa means to her from her verses to her artwork. Each page gives you an insight to her dedication to her homeland, the trials and tribulations of the political growing pains of Africa, its richness and its poverty. This is really a book to keep and reread for its beauty and sensitivity.

Reviewers Footnote: For the past twenty years, Susan and her husband have been passionately committed to animal wildlife conservation. This has resulted in being actively involved with the “Save The Rhino Conservation”, working on the Black Rhino Relocation Project that was carried out in the Zambezi Valley. As artists, they have often donated paintings and graphics to fund-raising auctions to benefit wildlife conservation projects. One such exhibition staged in the Harare Sheraton for the “Zimbabwe Wild Life Organisation,” resulted in donating the proceeds from eighty of their artworks to the Cecil Kop Nature Reserve in Eastern Zimbabwe. The funds went towards purchasing breeding stock and starting a wild life conservation educational school for local children.

Reviewer: Elizabeth Lucas-Taylor, author/poet
http://www.authorsden.com/elizabethlucastaylor
elizabethlucastaylor@earthlink.net

Laurel Johnson
Midwest Book Review
African Dust on the Soles of My Feet
by Susan Cook-Jahme
ISBN 0-620-32202-0
143 pages at $ 12.50
http://www.myspace.com/happyscribbler

In her second full length book of poetry, Susan Cook-Jahme once again shows us her African homeland through loving eyes. I'll give you several random excerpt samplings to demonstrate her gift.

"Victoria Falls" extols that ancient wonder:
Sharp intake of breath
At the beauty
Of roaring mists that swell
And swirl up into the sky...
Filming the skin
Like a lover's caress.

In "Star Gazer" we see a goat herder, the same today as he has been for millennia:
I am the king of all terrain,
That undulates far and wide,
My workers hands my pride,
The shuttered night my sanctuary,
A humble goat-herd dressed in hide....

"Domain of My Memories" is a paean to the poet's homeland:
Softly in languid teasing, you beckon,
Rolling Country, you are the abode of my memory,
You remain barefoot with childhood innocence and laughter,
Defying all poetic imagining with your truth,
I drink in the spirit of your eternal essence, my Motherland.

"The Elephants Final Walk" was one of my favourites:
There is a far place unknown to man
Beneath shaded canopies of tall acacia trees,
Standing silent sentinel on mud greased banks
Congealed in fetid weed and reed,
Where these great beasts walk their last mile...

"Hamba Kahle" means "Go Safely", which will make a fitting final excerpt:
For you who have drunk deeply
Of the waters of this African land,
Will find an aching thirst to quench,
And return to drink deeply of it once again.

This review has barely scratched the surface of what you will find in African Dust on the Soles of My Feet. The poet writes of love and death, friendship and passion, sorrow and injustice. For those who love poetry, or have a certain curiosity about Africa, Susan Cook-Jahme's latest book is a must read.

Laurel Johnson
Midwest Book Review

Review of African Dust on the Soles of My Feet
By Phyllis-Jean Green
I have always loved Susan Jahme's poetry, but "African Dust on the Soles of my Feet," proves she can surpass herself. The only disadvantage to reading the book is that if you haven't lived in Africa, you want to so bad you can taste it. Yes, and hear it, smell it, and feel it. "From the undulating Zambezi River / Flowing past bank of reed clad pungent mud" to the "Holocaust of trees" at Lake Kariba or "Floating on dreams of vaporous plasma" at the police outpost, Punda Maria" or passing "The Butterfly Boy" and the "Matriarch [elephant]" as she "breathes her final breath" or as "Waterbuck nervously scent the air in. . .fear of the stalking cat out looking for his lunch" and hundreds of other breathtaking images, Jahme leads us through a vast and mysterious land we will never forget. We laugh at the monkey flashing stolen dentures. We gasp as a poisonous snake writhes our way. We weep at what has been lost. For people we wish we could have known. But most of all, we marvel at the depth of Jahme's knowledge and her insight and passion. Add to this a talent for expressing the inexpressible, and you have a masterpiece. Let's pray that Susan Jahme lives to write many, many books.