[Gerald Moore reviews 'Song of Lawino']: "Out of the grasslands of Northern Uganda comes a new voice in African poetry. It is a voice whose innate sophistication is controlled by compassion and understanding, so that the poet can quite simply lend it to an illiterate woman whose circle might otherwise be confined to the village well and the dancing arena... Mr. Okot's poem was originally composed in Lwo, the language of the Acoli people. Much of its imagery is rooted in their traditional songs of love, war, victory, and death. In rewriting his poem in English he has chosen a strong, simple idiom which preserves the sharpness and frankness of this imagery, a structure of short, free verses which flow swiftly and easily, and an uncondescending offer of all that is local and specific in the original... Inevitably lost is the pattern of rhyme, assonance and tonal variation offered by the vernacular. In the poet's own words, he has 'clipped a bit of the eagle's wings'. But what survives is enough to offer one of the most varied and exciting contributions yet made to English poetry in Africa."