Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone.
Cheney-Coker's poetry is tinged with the anxiety of his perennially uncertain status, dealing both with exile (he has spent the majority of his adult life outside of his country) and with the precariousness of living as an intellectual in Sierra Leone.
At the same time, he is concerned always with how he will be read; his poems are radical and ardent, but also erudite and allusive, which can distract a reader from Cheney-Coker's ideological project.
[4] In his "On Being a Poet in Sierra Leone" (from his The Graveyard Also Has Teeth, 1980) he writes: After three collections of poetry, all well received in the west, Cheney-Coker wrote a novel, The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, which was published in 1990.
[11] The film follows Cheney-Coker and Osundare on a road-trip through Sierra Leone and Nigeria as they discuss their friendship and how their life experiences have shaped their art.