One of the interesting elements of African poetry is the way it has journeyed in Africa, in Europe and through the diaspora around the world through originality, imitation, modern, identity consciousness, back to imitation to become an influence on the originality of a major contemporary literary movement.
In the beginning there were the original indigenous verses in the traditional ‘oral poetry’ of the several African nations such as those belonging to religious ritual, the incantations, Ifa, Iwe Egungun, the divinations of the Babalawo, praise songs and the tales of the griots among many others. During the colonial period there was the large-scale imitation of European verse, subjects and preoccupation followed by the development of internationally recognised poets writing in English, French, Portuguese and other European languages. During this development of what has been called modern African poetry emerged what some critics described as a dilemma of language choice which was not really a problem but an enrichment. There was also the rise of poetry sensitive to and sometimes deliberately foregrounding Black African identity.
Quite apart from those movements, which were both ‘conscious’ and genuinely artistic, was another round of imitation; this time in an attempt to lend form and distinctive style to the verse as well as to recapture its identity. This was an attempt, popular even among the best of the African poets, to imitate or somehow recreate the original indigenous traditional forms. As more powerful internationally acclaimed poets writing in English or French developed, African verse marched forward in many individual directions to be its own force in world literature. However, since much of this development was taking place in England, there developed what came to be called Post-colonial Literature contributed to by the Africans as well as Indians and West Indians. It has been a powerful presence in English writing that is now a major factor, both in theory and practice, in contemporary literature and criticism.
One of the poets who belong to these contemporary developments is Ben Okri, who is better known as a novelist. He achieved immediate fame at the very beginning of his career when his first novel, The Famished Road, won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1991. Okri was born in Nigeria and in 1980 moved to London where he lived in great poverty, sometimes practically homeless before what has been described as his “natural talent” produced the book that rocketed him to world fame. His fiction also includes Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches which have attracted high praise to the point of rave if not reverence from some critics.
His poetic output includes Mental Fight (Phoenix House, London, 1999) which has eight parts and is “dedicated to humanity in the age of Aquarius.” According to Robert Dorsman, one of the ‘rave’ critics most captivated by Okri’s style, it offers perspectives on the new age seeming to pay tribute to man’s creative capacity. The poem is “an ode to language and to the spirit of mankind.” Dorsman, a Dutch critic, introduced Okri at the annual Poetry International Festival in 2000 at the City Theatre, Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
From Mental Fight
And because we have too much
information,
And no clear direction;
Too many facts,
And not enough faith;
Too much confusion,
And crave clear vision;
Too many fears,
And not enough light –
I whisper to myself modest maxims
As thought-friends for a new age.
See clearly, think clearly.
Face pleasant and unpleasant truths;
Face reality.
Free the past.
Catch up with ourselves.
Never cease from upward striving.
We are better than we think.
Don’t be afraid to love, or be loved.
As within, so without.
We owe life abundant happiness.
Okri’s poetry here seems a mixture of the increasingly popular post-modernist verse forms and the African traditional. It speaks to the ‘new age’ stylistically as well as it does in the offer of inspiration. But the way it expresses itself in apparently plain, short statements is not only his attempt to be ‘clear’ but perhaps his longing back to the healing ritual of the traditional verse of Nigeria. There are several forms of this, used for divination, incantation, ritual, praise or instructional wisdom. What is often mistaken for simplistic narrative or statements in the traditional poetry is really internal dialogue. It is defined by Wole Soyinka as “a densely packed matrix of references”; a “progression of linked allusions towards an elucidation of the experience of reality” which is “the language of all poets.”
The references are to traditional idioms, proverbs and proverbial sayings, known metaphors in the language wise maxims, as seen in this incantation translated from the Yoruba. Like the Abiku and other myths, this may have come out of attempts to confront the high incidence of infant mortality in traditional Africa.
Incantation to Cause the Rebirth of a Dead Child
(Yoruba, traditional)
Death catches the hunter with pain.
Eshu catches the herbalist in a sack.
Shonponna is the snake that dies
And carries its children away.
Shonponna uses the invisible calabash
To kill two hundred people.
Eshu hands the invisible calabash to
Shonponna.
The black soil of the earth is on the farm.
The red soil of heaven is in the grave.
You my child,
Olundande, you born-to-die,
Return from the red soil of heaven,
Come and eat the black soil of this world.
Each reference is to a known text: a known proverb, metaphor, belief or myth. For example, Eshu is a minor deity who is, however, an important link to other major Yoruba gods. Eshu is a trickster god who has the power to confuse and mislead and has to be handled with care. Sometimes the text from which the allusion is drawn is the tradition of praise poetry such as the praise song in which not only the genealogy but the noble attributes of the subject are called out. Here the child is addressed in this fashion as “Olundande, you born-to-die.” It is a form of address which is formal, but also reverent and is more likely to appeal to and influence the subject. In this case it also refers to the myth in which children are born only to die and return to torment the mother.
While Okri may represent some aspects of a more recent generation of modern African poetry he is not the best example of it, if indeed ‘examples’ are to be accurately identified in an area that is not homogenous. There are many stronger representations in previous generations of poets such as Soyinka, himself, or Leopold S. Senghor and other leaders of the doctrine of ‘Negritude.’ Other prominent names from those generations include Kofi Awoonor who was born Awoonor Williams, went through much of his career under that name before changing it in keeping with the period when African identity was a governing factor. JP (John Pepper) Clarke and the political poets, kindred of Senghor, Birago Diop and David Diop, and South African Dennis Brutus may also be added to the list.
