He(art) of the metre: Poetry in the “vernacular”

Abstract

Summary The historical rise of African literature in Europhone languages, particularly English and French, as a social and disciplinary practice directed at the recuperation of the fractured African persona and world view following centuries of (mis)representation in Western-authored texts, has conferred on it an adversarial tone that is generally viewed as the archetypal character of African literature that is productive of other categories of ethnic/national literatures including those in the indigenous languages of Africa. Protest (commitment) or agit(ation) prop(aganda) as this category of literature is variously called is more often than not seen as the hallmark of African literature irrespective of its linguistic orientation. Framed against the broad backdrop of the counter-hegemonic claims of postcolonial theorisation, this article discusses theme in Ironu Akewi [Thoughts of a Poet] and Emi in mi Emi in re [My Love Your Love] respectively by Olanrewaju Adepoju and Olatunbosun Oladapo, arguably two of the most prominent of contemporary Yoruba poets. Implicit in the article's explorative concerns is the repudiation of the displacement (marginalisation) of African-language literatures, their denigration in the academy and consignment to a secondorder cadre vis-à-vis African literature in European languages. Such writing “back to the Empire”, such reinscription of the indigenous and questioning of a master discourse conforms with the postmodernist blurring of the space between the “high” and the “low”, the global and the local – indeed the written and the oral. The article makes the point that the overtly political preoccupation of African literature – English and French – is neither a given of contemporary African literature nor was it the originary character of the literatures, particularly poetry, of pre-colonial Africa.