VINCENT OKPOTI ODAMTTEN

"For Her Own (Works') Quality"

The Poetry of Ama Ata Aidoo

T HE FIRST PART OF THE TITLE FOR THIS ESSAY is a slight refiguring and thus
transfonnation of meanings implied by "Matchet" in West Africa. I The use
of comments that are admittedly about Ama Ata Aidoo's award-winning
novel Changes has more than a titular function in this critical overview of Aidoo's
two published volumes of poetry - Someone Talking to Sometime and An Angry
Letter In January.2 It is perhaps serendipitous that Aidoo's second volume of poetry
should have been published in the same year that her second, and most challenging
novel yet, was recognized internationally. The response of "Matchet" to the novel's
winning of the African section of the Commonwealth Writer's prize is indicative of
a habit whose repetition would be boring if it were not so detrimental to genuine
critical discourse and dialogue. Aidoo's poetic talents, although much in evidence in
her first novel, Our Sister Killjoy, and, to a lesser degree, in her other works, have
not been truly valued. This state of affairs is due in part to the fact that most of
Aidoo's poetry has been presented orally, and the few poems that have been pub-
lished are scattered in various journals (some difficult to come by) and anthologies. 3
Apart from the general dearth of first-rate criticism of modem African poetry, it was
inauspicious that a recent work on West African poetry should only mention Aidoo
on two occasions - first, in association with the unique contributions of Efua
Sutherland and loe de Graft to Ghanaian dramaturgy at the Institute of African
Studies, Legon; and secondly, in her capacity as a short-story writer. 4

I Matchet, "Ama Ata Aidoo awarded," West Africa (September 7-13, 1992): 1520.
2 Ama Ata Aidoo, Someone Talking to Sometime (Harare: College Press, 1985) and An Angry Letter
in January (Sydney & Mundelstrup: Dangaroo, 1992). Page references to these editions are in the text.
3 Brenda' F. Berrian's "Bibliographies of Nine Female African Writers," Research in African Litera-
tures 12.2 (1981): 216, is a good starting-point for a listing of Aidoo's early poems.
4 Robert Fraser, West African Poetry: A Critical History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986): 141,
153.

© FonTomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, ed. Kofi Anyidoho & James
Gibbs (Matatu 21-22; Amsterdam & Atlanta GA: Editions Rodopi, 2000).
210 VINCENT OKPOTI OOAMTTEN ~

Against the above background of various sins of omission and commission in

respect of African women's poetry in general and Aidoo's verse in particular, this
brief becomes most timely. Her first collection of poetry, Someone Talking to
Sometime, like her collection of short stories, No Sweetness Here,5 should be seen as
an organic whole. It is a precisely detailed map revealing the contours, the "sweet-
ness and smoky roughage," of Africa's Blackness and beyond. As the copy on the
back cover of Someone Talking To Sometime enthusiastically states:
Whoever suggested we could not stand too much reality did not reckon with Ama Ata's
awesome courage. Reading these masterly poems is like descending hand in hand with
a guide of irrepressible clearsightedness and wit into the hell and hurt that afflicts the
black continent. With its range and depth, with its utterly relaxed and inviting conver-
sational style, this volume beguiles the reader into a difficult, tragic yet ultimately up-
lifting odyssey. This is pure, cruel, funny, tragic and joyous (black) magic!

The volume consists of forty-five poems divided into two major parts. Part One
contains a total of nineteen poems, eleven of which are grouped under the title "I.
Of Love and Commitment," which is also the title of the second poem in the
collection; and another section, "2. New Orleans Mid-1970's," which includes
seven poems. Part Two, "Someone Talking to Sometime," has six major sections.
The first section, "Routine Drugs," includes six poems; the next, "Reply to Fonta-
mara," has five poems; the third section, "Legacies," has six poems; the fourth,
"Someone Really Talking to Sometime this Time," five; the next section, "Kwad-
wom from a Stillborn Creole Kingdom," has only three; and the final section is one
long poem, "Tomorrow's Song." The full impact and significance of the poems
emerges in their individual and collective articulation. In the first instance, we may
appreciate them as constituents of a section; secondly, as a section in relation to
another section or sections in each part; and finally, in terms of the juxtaposition of
the two major parts.
An Angry Letter in January and other Poems, her second volume of poetry,
while maintaining the same two-part structure as the first, simplifies the internal
configuration of each part. The poems are introduced by "As Always, a Painful
Declaration of Independence - For Me," which is a poetic statement of refusal, a
genuine testimony "Of Love and Commitment," the articulation of the desire not to
betray one's principles, one's self or selves. Part One, "Images of Africa at Cen-
tury's End," consists of twenty-five poems which, like those in Someone Talking,
explore our present predicament and our past heritage in relation to the idea and
reality of home and exile, self and other on the continent and in the diaspora.

5 Ama Ata Aidoo, No Sweetness Here (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1971).