African Poet Research Articles

Autocracy and Poetic Resistance in Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures and Delta Blues and Home Songs

Contemporary African poets either consciously or unconsciously utilize their art in scrutinizing the consequences of the actions of state operators on their societies. This essay explores the imaginative configuration of the trauma, civil violations etcetera visited on citizens by corrupt politicians of Nigeria’s Second Republic and the succeeding autocratic military rulers. Tanure Ojaide’s The Fate of Vultures and Delta Blues and Home Songs are therefore scrutinized in their depictions of the chicanery of politicians and the tyranny of military rulers in a postcolonial African State. This study adopts a contextualist template that locates the poetic constructs within Nigeria’s recent experiences. It highlights the corruption, violations of human rights, and muffling of critical voices by the rulers. It equally notes the poet’s celebration of the heroic acts of some citizens who defied the draconian rule. Also the study stresses the poet’s deployment of satirical devices in embellishing his art as he seeks to highlight the deleterious activities of both regimes. The essay concludes that the poet’s optimistic vision distinguishes his generation from the preceding one that had been less optimistic in its artistic works.

“Al wat kind is”: iconic images of children in apartheid-era South African poetry

ABSTRACTPhotographs of children have frequently proved to be the most iconic and emotive images to come out of conflict zones. Children have been used in similarly powerful ways in poetry too. This paper analyzes poetic representations of children and childhood by apartheid-era South African poets, including Lerato Kumalo, Chris van Wyk, and Ingrid de Kok. It pays particular attention to Ingrid Jonker's “The Child Who Was Shot Dead by Soldiers in Nyanga” and that poem's iconic after-life as manifested in Nelson Mandela's reading of the poem at the opening of the first democratically elected parliament in May 1994 and in the central role the poem plays in two film versions of Jonker's life, the feature film Black Butterflies, and the documentary A Mere Grain of Nothing My Death. The essay suggests that the status of children may make the best measure of progress towards Jonker's prophetic image of freedom.

Home is where the music is: an interview with South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile

My generation grew up listening to a lot of both South African jazz and its African-American counterpart. The older musicians, like the late Ntemi Piliso, came in contact with African-American musi...

Mafika Pascal Gwala (1947–2014) The poet-activist and the mirage of freedom

Mafika Pascal Gwala who passed away in September at the age of sixty seven (67) will be remembered as a straight- talking and often cantankerous South African poet who made a notable contribution to South African English poetry in the 1970s and 1980s. Born in Verulam in 1946, Gwala started writing in 1966 and his first poems and short stories appeared in the Classic, New Nation, Realities and Ophir . He edited the Black Review in 1973 and published essays in several books and magazines.

Sakhumzi Restaurant: exploring new avenues

Subject area Entrepreneurship. Study level/applicability Postgraduate Management Diploma Masters of Business Administration. Case overview Sakhumzi Restaurant on Vilakazi Street, in Soweto’s Orlando West, had grown exponentially since it opened in October 2001. Vilakazi Street was named after a South African Zulu poet, novelist and educator, Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, who was the first black South African to obtain a PhD in 1946. The street was famous for housing two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu – as well as for being the site of the shooting of Hector Pieterson during the Soweto Uprising. There were two museums in the vicinity that attracted thousands of tourists every year – Mandela House and the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum. The founder of Sakhumzi Restaurant, Sakhumzi Maqubela, had no experience of the hospitality industry but, nevertheless, had a “deep appreciation” of customer satisfaction, which he had learnt through his previous job in the banking sector. During the start-up phase of the restaurant, Maqubela immersed himself in books on business, focusing on leadership and communication. From such humble beginnings, the restaurant had become a thriving magnet for the tourist and local markets – tourists enjoyed sampling traditional Soweto fare, and for locals, Sakhumzi offered a culinary “home away from home”. Dressed smartly, Maqubela could be seen every day at his restaurant, mingling with patrons and greeting tour operators warmly. But what worried Maqubela was how to keep growing. Should he open another Sakhumzi? Would it work away from the tourist hub of Vilakazi Street? Or were there other options that he needed to explore? Expected learning outcomes The outcomes are as follows: evaluate the entrepreneurial mindset and how entrepreneurial opportunities are recognised, assess the individual-opportunity fit of an opportunity that is being pursued, navigate the entrepreneurial process, identify sources of entrepreneurial finance, identify and overcome resistance and obstacles to start-ups and growing the venture, rigorously analyse the potential of a new business opportunity/venture and assess the relevance of the practice of entrepreneurship to firms and society. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject code CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Furor impius/ non impia ira. Comparaciones de hombres con leones en la obra de Blosio Emilio Draconcio

The main purpose of this research is to show the similarities and differences between the comparisons of Gunthamund, Telamon and an anonymous uir fortis with lions in Dracontius’ poems and the similes related with them within the precedent literary tradition. Once established that the presence of certain quotes from Latin classical literature in this African poet’s texts is mediated by the previous appropriation of those same lines by other Christian authors in their works, we will examine the relationship between the sense implicit in the three similes proposed by Dracontius and their different narrative contexts.

What to Read Now: Selected Works from the African Diaspora

6 WLT SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2017 This is not the Africa you knew. These books, some rooted in Africa but mostly embedded in multiple lands, explore issues of race, equality, immigration, cultural shifts, and more. At their core, they capture the intimate portraits of family sagas, they lurk between this culture, that culture, this language, that language. They are filled with wisdom, knowledge, tenderness, wars, pain, perseverance and envelop us in a way we cannot expect, thus changing completely the way we experience a new resurgence of African literature. Yaa Gyasi Homegoing Knopf Set in Ghana and the US, this ambitious novel accomplishes what most African novels don’t: it reconciles the African with the African American, intricately weaving our histories in ways we cannot imagine. Gyasi’s characters are fierce, strong, proud, ruthless, mournful; in other words, human. We sympathize with this kind of new and raw vulnerability because we recognize it in ourselves. Following the lives of generations from two sisters (one in Africa, one in the US), Gyasi explores the complexities of slavery and race relations in America while pondering small, intimate moments. Homegoing is a masterpiece. New-Generation African Poets (Nne) African Poetry Book Fund Ed. Chris Abani & Kwame Dawes Edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani, the yearly poetry chapbook set is a delightful combination of emerging African poets. This year’s collection is no less ambitious in its scope: Nne introduces poets of a singular talent, exploring themes of belonging, questioning lands and seas that offer them refuge and refuse them at the same time. Giving voice to new poets is a particularly necessary task, and the African Poetry Book Fund continues to do so every year (see Matthew Shenoda’s essay on page 40). Helen Oyeyemi What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours Riverhead Books If you’ve read Helen Oyeyemi’s work, you know how skillful she is with her characters . This short-story collection reaffirms Oyeyemi’s exceptional talent, as characters move seamlessly from page to page, engulfed in their own private lives. Oyeyemi is not a writer in the traditional sense; her characters do not undergo a transformation and overcome a set of challenges; instead, they are more complex in their nature, more eccentric in their needs. As readers, we experience them through her expert prose, and we are left always wanting more. Mahtem Shiferraw is a poet and visual artist who grew up in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, and in 2016 her full-length collection, Fuchsia, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Notebook what to read now Selected Works from the African Diaspora by Mahtem Shiferraw ...

What to Read Now: Selected Works from the African Diaspora

6 WLT SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2017 This is not the Africa you knew. These books, some rooted in Africa but mostly embedded in multiple lands, explore issues of race, equality, immigration, cultural shifts, and more. At their core, they capture the intimate portraits of family sagas, they lurk between this culture, that culture, this language, that language. They are filled with wisdom, knowledge, tenderness, wars, pain, perseverance and envelop us in a way we cannot expect, thus changing completely the way we experience a new resurgence of African literature. Yaa Gyasi Homegoing Knopf Set in Ghana and the US, this ambitious novel accomplishes what most African novels don’t: it reconciles the African with the African American, intricately weaving our histories in ways we cannot imagine. Gyasi’s characters are fierce, strong, proud, ruthless, mournful; in other words, human. We sympathize with this kind of new and raw vulnerability because we recognize it in ourselves. Following the lives of generations from two sisters (one in Africa, one in the US), Gyasi explores the complexities of slavery and race relations in America while pondering small, intimate moments. Homegoing is a masterpiece. New-Generation African Poets (Nne) African Poetry Book Fund Ed. Chris Abani & Kwame Dawes Edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani, the yearly poetry chapbook set is a delightful combination of emerging African poets. This year’s collection is no less ambitious in its scope: Nne introduces poets of a singular talent, exploring themes of belonging, questioning lands and seas that offer them refuge and refuse them at the same time. Giving voice to new poets is a particularly necessary task, and the African Poetry Book Fund continues to do so every year (see Matthew Shenoda’s essay on page 40). Helen Oyeyemi What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours Riverhead Books If you’ve read Helen Oyeyemi’s work, you know how skillful she is with her characters . This short-story collection reaffirms Oyeyemi’s exceptional talent, as characters move seamlessly from page to page, engulfed in their own private lives. Oyeyemi is not a writer in the traditional sense; her characters do not undergo a transformation and overcome a set of challenges; instead, they are more complex in their nature, more eccentric in their needs. As readers, we experience them through her expert prose, and we are left always wanting more. Mahtem Shiferraw is a poet and visual artist who grew up in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, and in 2016 her full-length collection, Fuchsia, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Notebook what to read now Selected Works from the African Diaspora by Mahtem Shiferraw ...

Verse Africa: The Malleable Poetics of Some Contemporary African Poets

Verse Africa: The Malleable Poetics of Some Contemporary African Poets

The Last Shift

country, including the endless bane of corruption that continues to plunge deeper into Africa’s succeeding ruling classes. As in the case of his other poetry collections and narratives, the vibrancy of Mapanje’s verse is aided by his knack for truth-telling. Many of the poems evoke sadness but stir in the reader a participatory reaction to either grieve or comprehend the experience captured. Poems such as “Imagining Home,” “The Carwash, Clifton Moor, York,” and “Surviving Freedom in Sunderland” use vignettes to articulate the losses and the victories of exile. Like many others, these poems dramatize familial experiences and push forward the poet’s role as a chronicler of family, global, local, political, and social history. Put simply, Mapanje has assembled in this book poetic narratives endowed with the dreams, hopes, and struggles of his generation, his children’s generation, and the promising generation of his grandchildren. The images and imagery evoked help in approximating Mapanje’s status as an imbongi or praise singer of his people’s oral tradition. Tacitly crafted, these are poems working within the imaginative space of a seasoned voice. For those from the Yao-speaking African peoples of Malawi , Tanzania, and Mozambique, the last part of the collection, subtitled “Kalikalanje of the Ostrich Forest,” is the most moving and informative. Here, the poet’s investment in the oral resources of his homeland is enhanced by the fascinating tales traced to the character Kalikalanje, a reference to “anyone who comes into the world endowed with knowledge of past, present, future times and events.” Indeed these stories, cleverly resurrected in poetry, transcend time and illustrate the poet’s anchored footing in the culture of his people. With Greetings from Grandpa, Jack Mapanje reinserts his voice as a legend in the arena of contemporary Malawi and modern African poetry. His vision, without question, espouses the features and values of poetry that African poets writing today should emulate. Much as he has traveled the world and lived in exile, he continues to produce poetry that embodies continuity and commitment to ideals that uplift the human spirit, celebrate the orature of his people, and question the political context of his homeland. Dike Okoro Northwestern University Philip Levine. The Last Shift. New York. Knopf. 2016. 96 pages. Published posthumously, The Last Shift is and will be the last book of new poetry by Philip Levine, his “last shift” of turning the scrap metal of the inescapable wreckage of his youth—a youth robbed by the crushing exploitation of night-shift work in the Detroit auto industry—into the beautifully elegiac vehicles of his poems. As with his previous books, Levine here portrays workers (himself and many others) deprived of vitality, opportunity, and even hope by a harsh, uncaring capitalism and continued economic desperation forced by low pay: “It’s till Monday / 2,000 miles and fifty years / later and at my back I always / hear Chevy Gear & Axle / grinding the night-shift workers / into antiquity,” and also “In Detroit no one walks under the moon . . . or . . . the unseen stars / that years ago we stopped believing were there . . . the same moon / that left Detroit before I finished high school.” Many of these poems of the past are narrated in present tense precisely because the past was always vividly present for Levine. The experiences, images, and emotions of that period of his life became inescapable, regardless of time and geographical distance; they “kept going / on and on into the present,” so that even in a distant other country we find Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 83 Ana Paula Maia Saga of Brutes Trans. Alexandra Joy Forman Dalkey Archive Press In this raw depiction of life in Brazilian mining towns, Ana Paula Maia brings together three stories of men in their daily lives and how they handle the horrific, and sometimes routine, events of their existence. Readers will be entranced by the compelling insights into brutality, compassion, and brotherhood found in this poignant novel. Dimitris Lyacos Z213: Exit Trans. Shorsha Sullivan Shoestring Press A fierce book that is as much puzzle as narrative, Z213: Exit is the first in a trilogy (known as the Poena Damni) that represents more than three decades of work. Dimitris...

Verse Africa: The Malleable Poetics of Some Contemporary African Poets

Taking stock of the African Poetry Book Fund's project to bring contemporary African poetry into the fold of contemporary anglophone literature, Matthew Shenoda highlights the work of several African women poets who are changing the way we read and engage poetry in English.

Possessing an “Inner History”

Acquisition histories reveal how relationships between repository curators and collection donors shape an institution's holdings as well as the direction of future scholarship. However, researchers often overlook the significance of acquisition histories, as cultural heritage organizations do not make this information readily available, for accession information either is considered private or is not presumed to be valuable. Therefore, tracing acquisition histories requires analyzing evidence across critical, artistic, and institutional records to see how curators recruit donors and then support the processing and promotion of their collections. The case study of curator Kevin Young and Lucille Clifton at Emory University's Stuart A. Rose Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library provides an example of the merit of acquisition histories. While Clifton had no previous institutional connection to Emory, she chose Rose Library because she knew Young personally and trusted him, as both belonged to the same community of African American poets. I argue that Young advocated for Clifton's papers out of respect for her legacy, which included her mentorship of his early career. This “inner history” between writer and curator, mentor and protege, demonstrates the value of affective stewardship, or when a curator's emotional connection to a writer generates a level of collection advocacy surpassing standard promotional practices.

Two West African Voices in search of Decolonization: Kofi Awoonor and Christopher Okigbo

This study traces the process of decolonization in the poetry of two West African poets; Kofi Awoonor from Ghana and Christopher Okigbo from Nigeria. The chosen poets represent two distinct models toward decolonization. Decolonization is chosen as the topic of this study for its powerful presence in and effect on the literature of West Africa. In the process of decolonization, Awoonor and Okigbo seek to underscore the importance of Africans' returning to their roots as a means of reshaping their identities which the colonizers were determined to obliterate. They undertake, as their responsibility, to resist the literary manifestations of imperialism and direct their peoples towards forming an indigenous cultural identity. They succeed to incorporate the imagery of West African myth and folklore to revive the past and connect it with the present hoping to reconstruct a bright future for their people. Many critics have tackled decolonization in their critical writings; among them were Frantz Fanon, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Edward Said and Bill Ashcroft. The study makes use of some of these views with special reference to Fanon and Nugugi

Embodiment and Corporeal Knowing in the Poetry of Gabeba Baderoon

In light of the regained interest in the body and embodiment in literary studies, this article seeks to elucidate the relationship between embodiment and knowing as evident in a number of poems by South African poet Gabeba Baderoon, a poet who has to date been neglected by critical inquiry. The purpose of this discussion is to illustrate the notion of embodiment depicted in Baderoon’s work, and to indicate how her unique portrayal can contribute to the discourse on embodiment in literature. This paper takes a phenomenological approach of the kind entertained by Maurice Merleau-Ponty as its starting point, and utilises brief close readings of four of Baderoon’s poems to demonstrate how the notion of embodiment can be understood through her work. It shall be argued that this is done on two interrelated and often simultaneously rendered levels: embodiment as a motif, and her poetry as a form of embodiment. This aspect of her work is especially lucid when considering the recurring theme of knowledge, in which she emphasizes the necessary embodiment in the process of knowing, an approach that transcends the presupposed mind-body dichotomy, and significantly relates to phenomenological notions such as ‘lived experience’ and ‘dwelling’. Studying Baderoon’s poems in light of her depiction of the body and embodiment not only offers a distinctive view of the embodied nature of knowledge, but moreover, provides an insightful glance at practising a ‘theory’ of embodiment in literary studies.

“Here it is safe to assume nothing at all”: aesthetics and the impasse of South African poetry criticism

ABSTRACTThis intervention highlights the question of literary evaluation and aesthetics in contemporary South African poetry in English. It suggests that the antinomy of ‘formal’ versus ‘sociological’ approaches, first criticised by Cronin three decades ago, is still present, and mars any attempt by critics to understand, appreciate and assess the diversity of the output of South African poets more fully. This flaw has become more noticeable and more vexed in the contemporary situation of global flows of information and influence, inter alia via the internet. This is exemplified in a brief analysis of two contemporary South African poets, Khulile Nxumalo and Lesego Rampolokeng. Using the formulations in Jahan Ramazani’s recent A transnational poetics as a starting point, the article suggests ways in which the present critical impasse might be addressed.

When She Refuses to Settle

This essay compares the representations of adolescent sexual abuse and female sexuality in the poetry of South African poet Genna Gardini and Australian poet Kate Lilley. It explores Sabine Sielke's contention that differences in sexuality have predominantly constructed female sexuality as victimisation. In contrast, contemporary poets like Gardini and Lilley unsettle such alignment, demonstrating not only its constitutive limits but also providing a counter-discourse of radicalised agency.

Guy Butler's Poetry and Poetics

Guy Butler, who was born and spent much of his life in the Eastern Cape, is an important South African poet. Yet his verse may seem unremarkable. Take ‘Servant Girl’, a poem written towards the beg...

‘Whole Words, Whole Worlds?’

This paper was written as a talk for the University of Western Sydney's September 2013 workshop Poetic Craft and White Settler Colonialism: A Workshop on Australian and South African Poetics. The o...

James Matthews: From Cry Rage to the New South African Nation

ABSTRACTLegendary South African poet, fiction writer, and activist, James Matthews exemplifies the path from “dissident” writing to contemporary engagement with community issues in Cape Town. Author of numerous works of poetry, including Cry Rage (1972), Black Voices Shout (1974), Flames and Flowers (2000), Poems from a Prison Cell (2002), and Age Is a Beautiful Phase (2008), Matthews engaged political concerns in South Africa, much of which can be understood through historical and cultural lenses. Especially focusing on the collected works found in the republished version of Cry Rage, this paper examines poetic language and themes as they move from a vigorously articulated anti-apartheid sentiment to a community interest based on political issues of the twenty-first century in the “New South Africa.”A primary goal of this paper is to assess the transition from apartheid to liberation through Matthews's creative works and also through his retrospective thoughts on the early years and the development of his career in relation to twenty-first century realities in Cape Town and the nation more broadly. To what extent have the ideas of the Black Consciousness period been maintained in the collective memory of twenty-first century Cape Town residents? In this regard, the social history of District Six can be unearthed through the literary works of Matthews and through his memory of events, personalities, and struggles.

Landscape Genocide

Landscape Genocide Ladan Osman (bio) I slept thinking of Lido beach, how my mother walked thereevery morning when pregnant with me. I know the mineral scentof seawater wherever I am. If the sun bakes the metal of earth,if my own damp scalp sweats, if I hold my hennaed palmsto my face. I have said, “God. There is no god but God”into my metallic palms. When my blood started, war started.Ever since the war started, I dye a henna disk on each palm.I refresh it when it browns, old blood. “God,” into my mineralpalms when the whole street was white sheets, thin mendigging graves night til dawn til night til dawn. They pausedfor every single prayer. I woke thinking of an orb of light.It dragged me through a dim street. It lifted me off my feet.I shouted “This is my light!” and held it tight against my belly.I was still, beyond known stillness, a gravity of my own,and still I didn’t light the street. I woke thinking of Lido beach.The last thing my mother promised me was a photo of her,five months pregnant, at the shore, backlit by the ocean.“Go at dawn,” she’d say. The water was warmest at dawn.At dawn, girls went to the sea in whatever they were wearing,even if they had school later. Their mothers couldn’t keep themfrom the water, from walking fully dressed into it.I woke up thinking there was nowhere to go but Lido,that the orb, a giant marble in my diaphragm, would floatwith me there. There was nowhere to go but into the sea.Between this interior desert and the sea at the edgeof my known world, orange pekoe tinted sandmarked with the heels and balls of firm and dazed feet.Charred acacias facedown in the dust. Succulentsmarking clusters of graves. Graves of peopleand fruit-bearing trees. Bones of tall livestock,the startling domes of camel ribs lit like a great hallby the relentless sun. There is nowhere to go but the sea.Between here and its mineral scent, bones of people,small and not small, bush lions and their young,always litters of bones at the line between known [End Page 305] and wild worlds. Between here and Lido, the landin full prostration. The only song, metallic. Shells,or whole bullets underfoot, sometimes whole pilesat the edge and center of towns put facedownat night, at dawn, during afternoon prayer, at dusk.Between here and Lido, the land and everythingin it, in full submission to the mineral scentof our water and blood and inability to cry anything,not even “God! No god but God!” We go at dawn. [End Page 306] Ladan Osman LADAN OSMAN was born in Somalia and reared in Columbus, Ohio. She graduated from Ohio’s Otterbein University and later received the MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin. In addition to publishing in such periodicals as Apogee, Prairie Schooner, and Transition, she is author of The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony, which, as a manuscript, won the 2014 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and was published the next year by the University of Nebraska. In 2014, her chapbook Ordinary Heaven was selected as a text to be published in Seven New Generation African Poets (Slapering Hol Press, 2014), a box set project supported by the African Poetry Book Fund. She is currently a resident of Chicago. Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press