West African Poetry

West African poetry, as is the case with postcolonial literature generally,

emerges from the colonial education and literary processes. Still, the
history of this poetry goes a little bit longer as compared to the other
African sub-regions. West Africans generally credited with having first
experienced with poetry include: Juan Latino (1516 – 94); Phyllis Wheatley
(1753 – 84), and Olaudah Equiano (ca. 1745 – 97).

However, for the reason that these poets were former slaves who wrote
outside the African continent with little or no deep commitment to Africa, it
is problematic to characterise them as the true representation of West
African poetry.

The origin of West African poetry in English can therefore be traced to the
first generation of West African nationalists who employed their verse
specifically for arousing political awareness, especially in the aftermath of
WW2 (Second World War).

This group had such figures as the Nigerians Dennis Osadebay and Nnamdi
Azikiwe; the Ghanaians R.E.G. Armattoe, Glayds Casely Hayford and
Michael Dei-Anang; the Liberian Roland Dempster and the Sierra Leonean
Chrispin George.

These poet-politicians are thus referred to as the “pioneer poets of West

Africa”; and they employed their poetry in propagating pride of race and
cultural nationalism, especially since by the virtue of their Western
education they had better contacts with the outside world.

This group initially found outlets for their work in regional newspapers such
as Sierra Leone’s Weekly News and The West African Pilot. As well, they
produced individual volumes of poetry such as Between the Forest and the
Sea (1950) by Armattoe; Africa Sings (1952) by Osadebay; and Precious
Gems Unearthed by an African (1952) by Chrispin George.
1
They later on published their poetry in important anthologies such as
Anthology of West African Verse (1957) edited by Olumbe Bassir; An African
Treasury (1960) edited by Langston Hughes; and Reflections: Nigerian
Prose and Verse (1960), edited by Francis Ademola.

The pioneer poets also glorified pre-colonial African civilisations which they
viewed as being eroded by Western civilisations.

The major criticisms of their verse was that it romanticised Africa, was full
of clichés and stereotypes, it had over utilised Biblical allusion; and that in
some cases it even bordered on apologia.

After the Pioneers

From the 1950s and running into the 1960s, the period of independence
movements in most West African countries, West African poetry developed
an identity of its own. This was poetry, unlike the oral poetry or that by the
pioneers, that was more focused, energetic and revolutionary.

The major poets of this period include: the Nigerians Gabriel Okara,
Christopher Okigbo, J.P. Clarke and Wole Soyinka; the Ghanaians Kofi
Awoonor, Kwesi Brew; the Gambian Lenrie Peters, etc.

These poets of the independence era addressed nearly the same issues as
their predecessors, but their tone was militant and they portrayed a rather
accomplished poetic craftsmanship (this could be attributed to the fact that
most of them had studied literature and were therefore aware of the
principles of literary composition).

These poets were also more politically sensitive and more alert to the
concept of the ideological basis of literature as well as the idea of
imaginative writing as a viable tool for identity formation and cultural
freedom.

2
Further, these poets were influenced by the poetic techniques of modern
poets such as G. M. Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, etc (these
are poets who had revolutionised poetry by breaking rank with the
traditional poetic structures). With this influence, these poets developed the
ability to match content with form, especially in their use of images and
symbols from both the Western and indigenous African traditions.

The above link can be seen in such poet as the Nigerian Gabriel Okara,
regarded as the first modern West African poet to be published in English
(his first poems appeared in the journal Black Orpheus in 1957). In his
“Piano and Drums”, he juxtaposes Western and African traditions. The
piano, a symbol of Western civilisation leaves the protagonist perpetually
lost.

The above can also be said of poets such as Chris Okigbo in “Heavensgate”;
Kwesi Brew in “A Plea for Mercy”, Awoonor in “The Cathedral”, etc. These
poems depict the negative impact of Western colonialism through images
and symbols that fascinate by their authenticity.

After Independence and the failure of the postcolony

After independence, the thematic preoccupation of West African poetry

shifts dramatically to matters affecting the nation, the state and even ethnic
communities comprising these nations.

Specifically, post-independence West African poetry addresses issues of:

corruption, tribalism and ethnic isolationism, social and political injustices,
military dictatorship, etc.

The Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 –1970 is an episode that shows how poets,
especially the Nigerian ones, responded to the failure of the Nigerian
postcolony (Nigeria itself being seen as a country threatened by ethnic
distrust and corruption).

3
Achebe, for instance, in his Beware, Soul Brother (1971), offers a strong
lament of human beings inhumanity towards fellow human beings. In A
Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), Soyinka depicts the personal and collective
agonies that violence engenders.

J.P. Clarke in Casualties (1970) castigates the futility of resorting to violence

and war as a means of resolving human problems.

Another important path in the development of modern West African poetry

was that of the growth of a feminist consciousness and voice through the
poetry of Molara Ogundipe-Leslie in collections such as Sew the Old Days
(1985); Mabel Segun in such collections as Conflict and Other Poems
(1986); and Ama Ata Aidoo in collections such as Someone Talking to
Sometime (1985) and An Angry Letter in January (1992).

In these poets, we get poetic sensitivity in the exploration of issues such as

love, social inequality, gender relations, and effects of violence especially on
women and children etc.

Contemporary West African Poetry

Contemporary West African poetry is characterised by a rich variety of form

and structure. There is a very experimental utilisation of pidgin, recourse to
orality, poetic lyricism, use of satire, etc. All these stylistic features, beyond
adding to the beauty of composition, also help to articulate the poets’
disillusionment with the West African postcolonies (characterised by human
violence and suffering; corruption, greed, etc).

West African poetry can thus be seen as one of the most innovative and
intellectually involving on the continent.

The Poetic Tradition of Wole Soyinka

Reflections on the Poetry of Soyinka, Yeats and Hughes

4
Note: This is a brief reflection on some of the poets that are class readers.
Closely read the individual poems, severally, in order to get their flow in
terms of form and content.

Wole Soyinka (b. 1934)

Soyinka, the first black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1986, is a multi-generic author who is at home in drama, poetry, the
essay, prose fiction and poetry.

In terms of influence, he draws from European poetic models and traditions

– Modernist tradition, surrealist tradition, etc – and his native Yoruba
mythologies and cultures. In terms of themes, he delves into issues affecting
his immediate constituency, Nigeria, and Africa generally – the moral rot in
the society, necessity for revolution socio-culturally, African identities and
cultures, spiritual heroism, individual’s struggles against tyranny, etc.

Soyinka is a highly anthologized poet, but his major collections include:

Idanre, A Shuttle in the Crypt and Ogun Abibiman.

An important conceptualization that draws from Yoruba among other

philosophies and that guides Soyinka’s dramatic and poetic oeuvres is what
he has referred to as the ‘Fourth Stage’.

Soyinka divides human existence into four phases as follows:

The first phase is the past of the ancestors which is seen to contain pre-
existence, history, legend, fulfillment, concretions, creation and failure

The second phase is the present of the living which stretches the
imagination through present action, creativity, actuality and events

5
The third phase is the future of the unborn which envisages hopes,
aspirations and dreams

The fourth phase/stage then is the medium of ether which is the resolution
ground for imaginative action, dream, comas (unconsciousness), twilight
(dusk), the loss of consciousness and the split moments just before a birth
or just before a death.

Even death and mythologies are province of this fourth area of experience,
an area that is intractable (difficult) and fluid. Soyinka himself has called it
in Myth, Literature and the African World, the territory of essence ideal, the
unconscious, the source of creative and destructive energies, the
transitional yet inchoate matrix of death and becoming…

As you engage such of his longer poems such as Idanre, obviously you can
see the manifestation of this ‘fourth stage’ philosophy. But this should also
be related to the place of the gods, especially Ogun, in Soyinka’s poetry and
drama.

Soyinka draws from Greek mythology to partly contextualize his African

reality. He does this through recourse to the two Greek gods; Apolo and
Dionysos, who simultaneously represent for the African (Yoruba) space
Obatala (like Apolo), the god of creation; and Ogun (akin to Dionysos), the
god of creativity and of destruction.

So while Obatala is a gentle and serene agent of creation; Ogun is a

vigorous inspirer of war and metallurgy.

The two disparate tendencies thus clash to generate other modes of

creative perception, but are reconciled by that medium of beauty – art (the

6
fusion into the province of dreamland and of drunkenness – the artist as a
builder and destroyer; a creator and a revolutionary, etc).

According to Soyinka in Myth, Literature and the African World,

The Yoruba is not, like European man, concerned with the purely
conceptual
aspects of time; they are too concretely realised in his own life,
religion,
sensitivity, to be mere tags for explaining the metaphysical order of
his world. If
we may put the same thing in fleshed-out cognitions, life, present life,
contains
within it manifestations of the ancestral, the living and the unborn. All
are vitally
within the intimations and affectiveness of life, beyond mere abstract
conceptualization. (144)

A close reading of such poems as Idanre reveals this inter-textual creativity

in Soyinka.
.
Here is a brief illustration of the Soyinkaean poetic tradition through his
poems, ‘I Anoint My Flesh’ and ‘I Think it Rains’.

“I Anoint My Flesh” is a poem from Soyinka’s collection A Shuttle in the

Crypt which collects poems composed at the period of his detention during
the Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967 -70. Soyinka was accused of collaborating
with the secessionist Biafra, charges he denied and in protest against the
military authorities’ treatment of him, went into a long hunger strike in
prison.

“I Anoint My Flesh” strongly proclaims Soyinka’s righteousness and reflects

the defiance of a spirit that refuses to surrender to the forces of oppression.
The poet assumes the image of an individual undergoing a purification rite,
determined to demonstrate the purity of his mind and body and daring the
forces of evil.
7
The poem carefully leads us through this ritual, and we get an insight into
the significance of each act. The repetition of the phrase “I anoint” at the
beginning of each process emphasises the ritual character of the entire
experience.

But the atmosphere is one of confrontation between two spiritual forces (the
conflict between light and dark as introduced in stanza 1). The poet sees the
system that has detained him as an evil enemy.

In lines 2-3, the imagery here is complex. ‘Solitude’ (the poet’s solitary
confinement) has made his body lean and in the process has purified or
blessed (hallowed) his thought.

The poet’s anointment of his flesh is a symbolic act of purification as

effective as the solitude of making his body lean.

...‘lean oil’ is an example of transferred epithet, as it is the body, not the oil,
that is lean.

Another powerful image is in lines 14-15; in the confrontation, the ‘hate’ of

the enemy has been burnt out (spent) and the triumphant poet now
sprinkles the ashes on his heart that still blazes with righteousness, as the
final act of his purifying ritual.

“I Think it Rains”

Soyinka here offers a unique view of rain. The poet aims partly to conjure
up a lively mage of rainfall. The idea of loosening up dryness or ‘parch’, the
action of rain on ashes (stanza 2), the beating force of the water (stanza 4),
and the persistently straight lines of showers falling on the ground – all
these are the result of a careful and sensitive observation of a heavy fall in
the wet season.

8
There is also a certain tone of excitement in the first lines of the first five
stanzas that reflects the joys and vitality that we feel with the fall of rain.

But is there really rain falling? The poet seems to have simply conjured in
his mind a picture of rainfall from his previous experience of it.

In the poem is the image of a man determined to overcome a feeling of

depression, resolved to fight the forces that limit his freedom of thought and
speech, bent on getting rid of the unhealthy sentiments within him and
remaining a free spirit.

The persistent force with which the rain falls, the excitement which it
brings, and its success in opening up all kinds of rigid surfaces, serve as an
inspiration for the determination and spirit of the poet.

The poet thus uses aspects of nature or the human experience to reflect his
own private sentiments.

In lines 1-4, the action of rain is transferred to the human mouth as a

symbol reflecting the poet’s search for freedom of speech.

Lines 5-8, the play between the ashes and rain is a symbol for the continued
‘circling’ (activity) of the spirit of the poet. ‘Ashes’ manifests as a symbol of
burnt or wasted energies which are here re-activated with the coming of the
rain. ...‘closures’ in line 10 means ‘restrictions’; and in line 12, we find a
poetic way of saying ‘pure sadness’.

Lines 14-15; ‘wings’ imply that the poet’s desires are flightly or frivolous,
and by pulling them apart the rain is doing the good job of exposing them.

Lines 15-16 we find paradox and oxymoron (cruel/baptism); and paradox for
the reason that the rain is doing the poet good by causing pain.

Secondary References

9
Killam, D., and Ruth Rowe, eds. The Companion to African Literatures.
Oxford: James

Currey, 2000.

Okpewho, I. The Heritage of African Poetry. Harlow: Longman, 1985.

Soyinka, W. Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge: Cambridge

UP, 1986.

10