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This paper begins with the assertion that world literature is in danger of becoming a closed system, whereby literature anticipates its critical reception in both its form and content. Emergent African literary forms are often excluded from the field of world literature precisely because they demand methods of reading that challenge this anticipatory logic. We refer to this emergent literature circulating in African urban spaces as "African street literature." This paper focuses on three such street forms: ephemeral print literature, flash fiction, and spoken word poetry. In all three cases, the literary form registers its situated-ness, and as such its location is co-constructive of the field of the literary text. The methodological intervention that the paper makes explores ways of reading context, material, form, and content as combined and codetermining without losing attention to the literariness of the text under examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses challenges of the relative neglect of African poetry in literary and popular culture studies by attending to not only the primary texts, but the reading cultures they foster. Taking a diachronic and comparative approach, three serial publication formats across the past seventy years are examined: the Francophone African magazine Bingo from the 1950s to the 70s, the multiple printings of Chinua Achebe's poetry from the 1970s to the early 2000s, and emerging digital platforms in the 21st century. In each case, the rhetorical strategy of parataxis, or the juxtaposition of various forms and genres, contributes to the literary value placed on the poetry and its circulation among diverse audiences. The paper reconsiders the popular as a category of analysis that challenges a truism of African expressive culture—ascribing orality to tradition and written texts to elite structures—by attending to lay reading publics and their energetic engagement with the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the interaction of Oromo's oral literature with written poetry. The main objective is to indicate the way different types of oral literature elements are adapted to written poetry. Data were collected through qualitative methods such as document analysis, interviews, and group discussions and were analyzed qualitatively. Types of Oromo oral literature like a proverb, oral narrative, oral poetry, and riddles are adapted into written poetry by different authors. The interaction forms a bridge between the oral literary culture and written literature enabling both to complimentarily develop Oromo literature. As Richard M. Dorson states, "Oral literature can and frequently does enter into written literature. A new generation of African novelists... strews the proverbs of their native languages throughout their fiction" (2). The intermixing of African orality and written literary works makes literature closer to culture and societal life. These connections sustain the life of oral literature in written literature, on the one hand, and enable written literature to aesthetically communicate the culture, history, norms, and beliefs of a group of people who share it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keamogetsi Molapong's poetry reflects the concerns of a socially engaged writer, artist, and activist who has devoted his life to promoting the arts in Namibia despite the financially precarious nature of such a life. His background is in theater for development, and his literary activities stem partly from involvement in development projects at the grassroots level, including, for example, sanitation programs in northern Namibia, industrial theater work, and voter education campaigns. Many of the projects that he has undertaken have been sponsored by nongovernmental organizations and donor and government agencies. My purpose in this paper is, first, to discuss Molapong's perception of the role of poetry in society and in terms of the benefits he has derived from writing and performing. Second, I analyze his major thematic concerns, particularly the interface between politics and poetry. Third, I shall critique the thought-provoking love poems he has written. The argument of this paper is that the subtle manner in which he plays with words and sounds, in many poems, brings to mind the oral roots of his poetry and makes the point that he retains the popular base of the Namibian struggle for independence that has been all but abandoned by the new political elite that were its leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are official royal bards at the courts of prominent African paramount rulers who sing in praise of these monarchs. Although it is the exaltation of the kings that dominates the bards' production, there are also traces of criticism of the monarchs' unpopular policies and high-handedness. Such critical comments, however, are not easily identifiable because they are often presented in figuratively dense language. Using the court bards in the palace of the Aláàfin of Òyó, a prominent Yorùbá ruler, as a case study, this paper explains how the bards employ poetic skills and diplomacy in discharging this difficult responsibility. It is my claim in this paper that the production of Yorùbá royal bards must be correctly interpreted before it can be meaningfully related to events in the society. While it is true that the material of the poetry might have been taken from common daily occurrences, it has to undergo some form of aesthetic adornment to become poetry. The purpose of this paper is to unmask the bards' tactics of criticizing their patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christoper Okigbo thought highly enough of his "Lament of the Silent Sisters" to revise it and submit it to Poetry magazine in May 1963. "I have already been heard in Africa and in Europe, and would want, if possible, to have an audience in America," he wrote to the editor. The poem was not published, not least because of the magazine's policy of not publishing material previously published … "anywhere, in any form." This article examines the revisions which Okigbo made to the earlier version of the poem both for the submission to Poetry and for Labyrinths. The revision show Okigbo working and re-working his themes, generously incorporating material from other writers, and changing the argument and direction of his poem along the way. The paper draws attention to the complex processes that produced the poems and that are required to understand and evaluate them. Much more will be known about these processes when Okigbo's papers (such as survived the Biafra War) became available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes an aesthetic reading of Abdilatif Abdalla's anthology of his prison poetry, Sauti ya Dhiki[ Voice of Agony]. While his poetry has been repeatedly analyzed as a form of critical discourse, its poetic angle has so far been rather neglected. Instead of presenting a catalogue of stylistic features, this article aims to show that in his poetry 'meaning' emerges not beyond but out of poetic form. Concentrating on the centrality of language, the prosodic pattern, as well as the use of topoi in his poetry, it questions the concept of poetry as giving form to an underlying idea. Poetry does not merely 'translate' political ideas or prison experience into poetic form; rather, poetic form and language shape the production of thoughts, if not the whole experience of prison. Conceptually, I refer to notions like 'cultural figuration' as well as Michael Taussig's concept of mimesis that seek to go beyond a dichotomy of form and content to highlight the thought-inspiring force of language that has taken form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on current black poetry in South Africa. This poetry can only be understood and analyzed in its relationship to a range of traditional and contemporary oral and verbal practices: songs, chants, slogans, funeral orations and political speeches. It can be understood only in terms of the context of its major mode of presentation and reception. These poetry performances occur fairly often in a variety of contexts, such as mass funerals for political martyrs, rallies and meetings. There is another poetry which is fairly widespread, the poetry of testament, inscribed on cell walls, smuggled out of jails on rolls of toilet paper or left behind under pillows in the townships.

The poetry of Bart Wolffe, the self-exiled white Zimbabwean writer, exposes the role of the environment and life experiences in shaping identity. For Wolffe, nature signifies refuge, tranquillity, and harmony; it is a sanctuary, more accommodating than the violent and harsh human society. In this paper, I advance the argument that a reading of Wolffe's poetry shows that he uses nature to construct his identity and belonging and as a means of self-definition, that is, of trying to make sense of himself. But his project of belonging and identity construction in postcolonial Zimbabwe is somehow complicated by his whiteness or positionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clarifies the sense in which ewì, a genre of poetry that straddles written and oral media, constitutes a tradition among the Yorùbá. It argues that ewì exemplifies the dynamism of Yorùbá popular culture in its openness, its innovative spirit, and its capacity to appropriate facilities that define the modern. It then demonstrates the sense in which ewì's tendency to integrate experimentation on the part of its practitioners is crucial to defining its character as an open form. The study pays particular attention to major milestones in the development of ewì and the works of selected practitioners in theorizing the genre on its own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interpretation of Christopher Okigbo's poetry remains deeply controversial more than forty years after his death. The poet himself did not help matters by telling interviewers that he did not ever set out to communicate meanings, but to make music. This paper investigates Okigbo's conception of the music of poetry and opens a new approach to the poet's work. It argues, through a close reading of two difficult poems of the 1962-66 period, that Okigbo's poetics did not prevent him from engaging deeply with the realities of his experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders the poetry of Okot p'Bitek in light of both his formal legal education and the principles of traditional Acholi law. Okot claims in Artist, the Ruler that traditional African poets actually create and proclaim law at a fundamental level in society. Okot himself, as a poet in the "traditional" mode, can thus be understood as performing a similar function, particularly in his poems Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, which can be read in terms of the reconciliatory procedures of traditional justice and, jointly, as an expression of the contemporary value (and possible complications) of traditional law as a response to the legal norms inherited from the British colonial legal system. Given recent debates about the efficacy ot traditional justice in promoting reconciliation in Northern Uganda, a "legal" reading of Okot's poetry demonstrates the continuing relevance of his perspectives with regard to traditional art and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remi Raji, one of the loudest and most eloquent political poets in Nigeria today, sees his craft as a means of conveying serious social message to his land. Raji's consummate political theme, which is powered by what he calls "the nationalist imagination," is skillfully explored in his latest volume of poetry, "Lovesong for My Wasteland" (2005), more than in any of his previous collections. Following the tradition of the social commitments of African literature and evolving orature-based aesthetics that marries choreography to poetry (choreopoetry), Raji traces the history of Nigeria, in the symbolic forty-five verses of the volume, exposing the leadership failures and plunder of yesterday and today, and presenting a hope that is predicated on the people's collective stand to build their ravaged land. The business of this paper is therefore the exploration of Raji's political theme in his latest poetic effort to raise his society's consciousness to the collapse of national psyche and to redirect their attention toward a better tomorrow for which they have to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines traditional and innovating elements in a praise performance organized by a hereditary bard in 2002 for a twenty-year-old from a prominent family in Segu (Mali). It shows the importance of a detailed knowledge of the youth's network of social relationships for understanding the oral text. Special attention is given to the circumstances that led to the composition of a praise song for so young a person (a most unusual event), to its implicit and explicit views on familial and other interpersonal relationships, and to the articulation of images and references drawn from the older oral literature, including the Segu epic, with ones grounded in twentieth-century social experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the worldly and unworldly in the famous Somali poem Jacayl Dhiig Ma Lagu Qoray by Maxamed Ibraahim Warsame ‘Hadraawi.’ The poem alternates between worldly and unwordly perspectives, each of which is a side in a dialectic questioning the nature of love. These different perspectives are reflected in references to time, people and landscape. A comparison is drawn with the way in which such references are presented in the poem Beledweyne, a more conventional love poem by Hadraawi, suggesting an intertextual relationship between the two poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the criticism on Aimé Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal focuses on the poem's linguistic innovation, especially its use of neologism. This paper considers the poem's syntax, its unusual and sometimes disorienting ways of organizing the links between sentence elements and between individual poetic lines. In this regard, the Cahier's recourse to anaphora is one of its features that has had the most influence on the work of other African diasporic writers. Looking in detail at the function of anaphora in the poem, especially in the crucial lines defining the term négritude, I suggest that Césaire's use of formal repetition is related both to his translation of a poem by Sterling Brown, and to his reading of Hegel's concept of "negative determination." I then read the ways a Césairean poetics of anaphora is appropriated, translated, and revised by other New World black writers, including Edward Kamau Brathwaite, C. L. R. James, and Will Alexander. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a checklist of the works of Okot p'Bitek. The emergence of Okot p'Bitek as one of Africa's most prominent poets has long been recognized in literary circles. Literature had existed before the advent of Europeans and the adoption of Western education and literacy in East Africa. This checklist includes p'Bitek's published books, essays, fiction, poetry, translations, and interviews. His poetry includes; "Song of Lawino: A Lament," and "Song of a Prisoner." Some of his studies include: "African Religions in Western Scholarship," "Religion of the Central Luo," and "Africa's Cultural Revolution."

This article discusses various issues related to the poetry of South African scholar Dennis Brutus. The problem with Dennis Brutus, of course, is that his writings are banned in the Republic of South Africa. Officially Brutus's poetry is unknown in South Africa, and one has to recognize that to a large extent the government's banning procedures do work. Born in 1924 in Rhodesia of South African "colored" parents, Brutus went to school in Port Elizabeth, took his bachelor degree in arts at Fort Hare in 1946. He became more and more caught up in opposition to apartheid, particularly in the realm of sport. Brutus began to write in the 1950s; and his first volume of poems, Sirens, Knuckles, Boots, was published in Nigeria in 1963 while he was on Robben Island.

Ananda Devi's latest collection of poetry, Ceux du large [ Afloat ], is an attempt to humanize those who are subjected to the inhuman condition of "refugeeism," the fraught positionality of being a stateless and anonymous refugee. I discuss the ways in which Devi's poetry uncovers the wounds of refugeeism through searing verse, bitter irony, and a scathing critique of Europe's intolerance to difference. I argue that refugeeism is a biting wound that results from forced migration and displacement. This primordial wound takes many forms in Devi's poetry—traumatic affect as embodied in the act of crossing treacherous seas, wounded seascapes that bear the scars of death, the poet's wounded sensibilities when faced with the plight of the refugees, the violence of coloniality represented by Europe's border ethic, and the title itself. The leitmotif of the wound traverses my analysis to reveal the wound's physical, psychological, and geographical permutations in this poetic text. The wound represents a form of violent affect as highlighted in the essay's discussions on suffering, trauma, grievability, and inhospitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009 Ivorian poet Azo Vauguy published the book-length poem Zakwato , a myth that Vauguy translated out of its oral keeping and ethnic language, Bété, into written French. Vauguy presents Zakwato at a defining political moment. Côte d'Ivoire's first civil war (2002–07) ended with a 2008 reconciliation agreement. Vauguy's note of dedication to then-president Laurent Gbagbo offers Zakwato in support of an ideological position. Gbagbo and his supporters promoted a rigid nationalism, defined by the concept Ivoirité , which determined "Ivorian-ness" by ethnic affiliation. While studies of African poetry tend to situate works within a broad postcolonial discourse, recognizing ethno-cultural specifics is necessary for understanding how Vauguy provides an affective contour to the political rhetoric. Referred to as a neo-oralist by peers, Vauguy revives an Afro-Francophone literary tradition that was robustly developed in Côte d'Ivoire in the 1980s. An analysis of Zakwato and its conditions of emergence provides a non-metropolitan view of postcoloniality, offering an example of the local, on-the-ground complications that decolonial efforts face when trying to reconcile historical colonial interference with contemporary political restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the representation of Hawaa (Eve) in Kenyan poet Abdilatif Abdalla's epic poem Utenzi wa Maisha ya Adamu na Hawaa [Epic of the Life of Adam and Eve], Building on Alamin Mazrui's contention that the poem can be compared to John Milton's Paradise Lost, scholarly debate on Milton's treatment of Eve becomes a lens through which to more closely examine Abdalla's Hawaa and the larger gender implications of her role in the poem's narrative. Close reading of Abdalla's poem through this lens reveals a far less misogynistic interpretation of Hawaa than previous critics of the poem have recognized. Taking into consideration Abdalla's depiction of Hawaa's creation, her role in the couple's transgression against God, and her relationship with Adam before and after their expulsion from Paradise, this article argues that the poet offers Hawaa as an archetype not of female inferiority and treachery but of human fallibility and capacity for growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers unfamiliar with the entire corpus of Césaire's writings question the connection between his literary works and his other texts, especially those of a political nature, many of which are little known. For them events such as the transformation of Martinique from colony to overseas Department appear to contradict the militantism in Césaire's poetry. Our analysis of selected texts from the large and varied corpus of Césaire's writings (plays, poems, essays, prefaces, speeches, interviews, declarations, telegrams, letters, and translations) during three periods in his life, 1935 to 1948, 1949 to 1956, and 1957 until 2009, reveals that there is unity in the ideas and actions of Césaire. The relationship of the literary to the political, however, evolves during these three periods. evidence comes, for example, from criticisms of the politics of cultural assimilation in his essays in "L'étudiant noir" and "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" in the first period to poems that directly challenged the literary formalism promoted by the French Communist Party in the second period, and a synthesis of the literary and the political in a little known poem about an murdered activist in New Caledonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 28 and 29 July 1997, a special committee of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard the testimonies of women who had been abused and brutalized during the years of apartheid rule by white South Africans. Seizing this unique opportunity to liberate their minds and voices, long suppressed by a heartless patriarchal system, the women told their tales within the traditional frame of oral performances. But the lack of a truly gender-sensitive format forced their testimonies into evasive strategies born partly of an ingrained resentment of male domination and partly of codes of secrecy under which blacks waged a long military struggle against the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opacity is an intrinsic characteristic of Otjiherero praise poetry: it simultaneously enables and complicates reception. This essay analyzes a piece of Herereo praise poetry (omutandu) that was created for the burial of the victims of the so-called "Windhoek Shooting" in 1959 and preserved until today by means of oral transmission. It explores the poetic response of the Herero community to the forced removal of Africans from the vicinity of Windhoek, their articulation of resistance against the aims of apartheid, and the expression of grief and dismay about the killing of several people at the escalation of violence in 1959. At that time, the performers expressed, in coded diction, their collective will not to move to the newly built township, Katutura. Today the poem projects a version of history that contradicts the reading of colonial history contained in the archival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the importance of symbols and metaphor in Angolan literature. The tradition of using symbols and metaphor spawned from the African colonial days when it was more safe to express inner feelings and cultural issues through such literary forms. During the colonial period there was also an important emphasis on identity and nationalism, which was also expressed through symbols. The article examines postcolonial poetry and how these themes and symbols are represented.

The article explores the ways in which poets and novelists mediate the act of social imagination. The emergence of undifferentiated public based on ideas of human interchangeability acts as the basis from which infinite audience can be addressed. Novelists and poets have reached out to their audience through inscribing their text with imaginings of larger social formations. Poets have also turned towards imagining larger, less knowable audience.

Examines the texts of Aime Cesaire's poem "Notebook of a Return to the Native Land" as palimpsest. Poetic stanzas; Principal distinctive traits of the texts; Free associated metaphors over the poetic relations between Cesaire and the surrealist group.

Analyzes a collection of poems, the `Inside,' composed by Jeremy Cronin, an African National Congress (ANC) cadre and Communist Party member, while he was serving a prison sentence for conviction under the Terrorism Act. Mediation between prison and the imagined totality of national territory; Introductory essay, `Inside Out'; Cronin's political and poetic aims; Characteristic example of Cronin's efforts to create poetic connections across distances and against longing.

Examines kimondo, a type of poetry used in electioneering in Lamu, Kenya. Definition and origin; Identification of kimondo as a dialogic poetic genre; Translation of kimondo verses into English.

The article discusses the relevance of ideophones in African-language prose, poetry, and drama. One of the unique features of African languages is the widespread use of what has come to be known as the ideophone, which has been defined in terms of a semantic-functional approach, based largely on the study of Southern African Bantu languages. The phonological characterization of the ideophone has not received as much attention as the semantic-functional approach, although it identifies a quality that is equally important in the appreciation of literature.

This article presents information related to imagery in the praise poetry of the Igede Adiyah. Created by individuals and tending to remain the sole property of their inventors, these genres enjoy tremendous popularity in the community. Poet Igbang's mode of proverbialization constitutes a pattern into which he introduces new elements that he presents in an entirely original manner. Although Micah Ichegbeh regards himself as the inheritor of a tradition that had become dormant, he is actually the only Adiyah poet in Igedeland today.

The article focuses on modern African literature. The author in this article has examined the essential features, forms, inspirations, and implications of a phenomenon that has become quite established on the poetic scene in Ghana. The concept and practice of performance are central to artistic expression and experience in African tradition. In defining the performance of verbal art and its relevance to the subject of poetry as a dramatic experience, one must envision various levels of performance. A number of writers have drawn attention to the popularization of poetry in Ghana, especially since the 1970s, through the medium of public recitals as well as radio and television programs.

The article reports that the dilemma of choosing between cross-cultural typologies and indigenous taxons in the study of African oral art has received ample coverage in genre scholarship. The eloquence of such scholarly testimonies, however, often tends to drive into oblivion the misleading traits, of so-called cross-cultural tags. While many literary scholars seem to be aware of the inadequacy of the label praise poetry, however, loyalty to the phrase remains unshaken in the absence of a more adequate tag.

The article informs about the social and cultural life of people of East Africa and in particular Tanzania. It reports on the Nanga bards of Tanzania. Enanga or nanga is a seven-stringed trough zither that the Bahaya and other interlacustrine peoples of East Africa play as they recite, sing, or chant songs, ballads, panegyrics, and epics. Enanga epic poetry developed around the Hima-Bito royalty, serving both political and aesthetic ends. It was the poetry of the ruling class and largely extolled their heroes and their kings unlike the ballads and ebizina, which were mainly lower-class genres.