Fascinated
The content of African poetry is made up of themes emanating from the African background. This background, you will recall, consists essentially of experiences from the colonial and post-colonial eras. The details of these experiences mainly involve a clash of cultures that occurred in the initial colonial contact between Africa and the West. Western culture, which was the culture of the colonialists, was superimposed on the African culture of the colonized. A clash of cultural values arose when African culture resisted this overlap.
This culture clash became a ready theme or item for many African poets. Okot p’Bitek explores it well in the two poems he wrote “The funny giraffe cannot become a monkey” and “My name sounded like a horn among the payira”. p’Bitek protests against the superimposition of white culture on African culture.
Exile and alienation are two important elements in African poetry that resulted from colonial contact, especially in areas of Africa colonized by the French. For example, Senegal. In these places, the French practiced a policy of assimilation whose objective was to turn Africans into French Negroes. These Africans absorbed so much of the white culture of the French that they practically lost their identity as Africans. The result was that they became alienated from their African roots and, as often happened, went to live in France, even going into physical exile. Senghor in ‘in Memoriam’ and ‘I Will Pronounce Your Name’ vehemently protests against this experience.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that African poetry is made up solely of themes that concern Africa and Africans. That is, topics that are localized. Some African poets write on themes that could apply to any part of the world. The example that we have here of such universal themes is in the ‘Telephone conversation’ of ‘Soyinka’ that deals with the issue of racism and her ‘post mortem’ that deals with the issue of death. The poet’s response to these issues is that racism is irrational and a hateful evil. From Soyinka’s point of view, death is unfathomable and therefore not worthy of man’s constant but futile probing.
African poetry covers many themes, both local and universal, depending on the experiences that Africa and Africans have gone through.
Style
In terms of style, African poetry is mostly written in free verse, which is common among many modern poets. It is not written according to any fixed rules, forms, or conventions. The form that African poetry takes is governed by the theme – matter that is treated. Free verse allows freedom of expression and style.
Instead of using rhyme, rhythm, meter or other fixed forms to enhance their meaning, African poets skilfully employ other poetic devices that enable them to achieve the same effect as those achieved by using fixed rules and conventional forms. .
On one final point: remember that we are not saying that African poets do not use resources such as rhyme, rhythm, meter, sonects, etc. They occasionally use these devices but do not particularly make them convey the meanings of their poems in the way that the devices just discussed embellish their meaning.
