Although Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (November 16, 1930–March 21, 2013) is one of the greatest writers of the past century and his 1958 debut novel Things Fall Apart is still the single most widely read book in African literature, few people are familiar with his lesser-known yet no less powerful poetry — so much so, that Achebe himself joked in a 1998 lecture at Portland’s Literary Arts that there is a conspiracy theory against his poetry. (Achebe’s ardent love of poetry dates back to the dawn of his career as a writer — the title of his magnum opus is borrowed from a line in Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming.”)

In this edited excerpt from his nearly two-hour Literary Arts lecture, Achebe reads three of his poems, later published in the 2004 anthology Collected Poems (public library).

Complement with Achebe on the meaning of life and the writer’s responsibility to society, then treat yourself to other beautiful recordings of authors readings their own work: Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, Frank O’Hara, Susan Sontag, T.S. Eliot, Dorianne Laux, Maya Angelou, Seamus Heaney, and Dorothy Parker.