Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poets and Poems: Ben Okri and “A Fire in My Head”

By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Lake Ben Okri

For Ben Okri, even the darkest stories are about hope

Standing in Hatchard’s Bookstore on Piccadilly Street in London, I’m looking through the shelves of poetry. Hatchard’s is the oldest continuously operating bookstore in London, having opened in 1797. It’s next door to Fortnum & Mason, and across the street from the Royal Academy of Arts. The Ritz Hotel is one block west, while Piccadilly Circus is two long blocks to the east.

Hatchard’s poetry section is not huge, but it’s sizable, larger than what you find in most American bookstores. A small table display of books occupies the space in front of the shelves. Perhaps it’s the striking black, red, and white color design, but one volume draws my eye — A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn by Ben Okri. The cover contains a sentence: “It was like a burnt matchbox in the sky.”

Okri has had a long and distinguished career as a novelist; he received the Booker Prize for his novel The Famished Road in 1991. He’s also written several collections of essays and short stories, a play, a movie script, a few television scripts, and several collections of poetry. With all of his writings and accolades, he says he considers himself a poet. He’s laid claim to inventing a new poetry form, which he calls the “stoku,” a cross between a short story and a haiku.

A Fire in My Head is his most recent volume of poetry, published in 2021. Its 43 poems occupy 139 pages. Some critics have described his poems and writings as “magic realism”; Okri describes that characterization as “lazy.” Perhaps a better description would be to say Okri is a poet who tells stories, and he often tells them in unusual ways. Here is how he describes his native Africa (he was born in Nigeria).

Africa Is a Reality Not Seen

A Fire in My Head Ben Okriafrica is a reality not seen
a dream not understood
its wars are the scab of a wound
its famine the cracking of seeds
its dictatorships a child torturing
beetles in the field.

its soul’s older than atlantis
and like all things old,
it’s being reborn,
and doesn’t know it.

countless cycles of civilization
and destruction are lost in its memory
but not in its myths.

africa is a living enigma
an old woman taken for a child
a wise man taken for a fool
a beggar who is also a great king.

The collection contains two long poems, and they may be the most arresting in the collection. I found myself reading and rereading them several times. One is entitled “Saved Head Poem,” a deep and often moving reflection on civilization and where it may be headed: “we have refused to face / the dark truth that our civilisation / has become the greatest / threat to our civilisation.”

Ben Okri

Ben Okri

The second long poem is one his best known, garnering 6 million views on Britain’s Channel 4 Facebook page. This is the poem that likely inspired the collection’s title and that cover sentence. “Grenfell Tower, June 2017” is Okri’s response to the tragedy of a high-rise fire in North Kensington in 2017, in which 72 people died during the 60-hour fire fed by the thermal insulation in the building. Many of the residents were immigrants or descended from recent immigrants. Okri’s poem captures the tragedy and, like most of his poems, offers hope for something better.

Okri has received numerous honorary degrees and awards for his writing, including the Commonwealth Writer Prize, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Order of the British Empire, and many others. He received a knighthood in King Charles III’s 2023 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

The poems in A Fire in My Head also tell stories; most are considerably shorter than the two long poems. He writes of love; freedom; the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; how a man finds himself in Boko Haram, the terrorist military organization in Nigeria; the Rohingya people in Myanmar; and other topics related to human rights. But Okri is ultimately and always a poet of hope, no matter how dark the subject he’s describing.

Related:

Ben Okri on writing his Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road

Ben Okri reads “Grenfell Tower, June 2017”

Photo by Photonoumi, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

Browse more book reviews

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan

5 star

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
  • Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025

Filed Under: article, Black Poets, book reviews, Books, Britain, Poems, poetry, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy