This collection of 37 poetry anthologies and collections from Papua New Guinea represents one of the most unusual components of the 2026 library acquisition — and one of the most valuable for researchers interested in the comparative study of postcolonial literatures.
Papua New Guinean poetry in English emerged in the 1970s as a distinctive body of work that has been almost entirely absent from Nigerian and broader African academic curricula, despite its profound relevance: a literature produced under colonial English-language education, grappling with questions of indigenous knowledge, language, and self-representation that African literary scholars know intimately from their own contexts.
These 37 volumes — spanning individual collections, university press anthologies, and small-press publications — constitute the most complete collection of Papua New Guinean poetry available in any Nigerian institution, and among the most complete on the African continent.