African poetry encompasses the wide variety of traditions arising from Africa's 55 countries and from evolving trends within different literary genres. The field is complex, partly because of Africa's original linguistic diversity but primarily because of the devastating effect of slavery and colonisation, which resulted in English, Portuguese and French, as well as creole or pidgin versions of these European languages, being spoken and written by Africans across the continent.
Joseph A. Ushie at the University of Uyo English department, in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria: "Modern written African poetry has a double heritage — pre-colonial and Western. As in most post-colonial situations, the tilt of our writing should be more towards the pre-colonial African literary heritage as manifested in the song, dirge, folktale, elegy, panegyric or riddle. Essentially, such art was meant for the whole community rather than for a few initiates."
Historical perspective
This perspective contextualises the historical, political and indigenous cultural dynamics that shaped both the written and oral forms of literature (orature) of Africa past and present. If African orature depends on community and social setting, it can be said that ore "grows out of tradition and keeps tradition alive". Present-day spoken-word and performance poetry, with its multidimensional forms of expression incorporating song, story-telling narratives, rhythm, rhyme, verse, movement/dance plus the modern media forms of digital recording, composition and video projection, can be viewed as logical evolutions of the ancient indigenous oral traditions. Since 2000 the Internet has also emerged as a publishing channel for the promotion of both written and performed African poetry.
Pre-colonial era
Numerous examples of pre-colonial African literature span the continent, from scripts documenting the kings of Ethiopian and Ghanaian empires, as well as popular folklore in a host of native languages, through to Mali's famous Timbuktu Manuscripts, dating from the 16th to 18th centuries, with a wide array of subject matter, including astronomy, poetry, law, history, faith, politics and philosophy. In medieval times the universities of North Africa amassed Arabic and Swahili literature.
Poetry as an art form has undergone several phases of evolution from pre-colonial to colonial and then to post-colonial eras in most African countries. As an example, in the pre-colonial era in Nigeria — the most populated country in Africa and a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual nation — poetry was unwritten. "There existed a thin line between poets and musicians, who composed and rendered poetry in musical form. Poets then published their works in the form of renditions at funerals and marriage ceremonies, with themes focused on praising virtues and condemning vices in society." Margaret Busby's 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa begins with a selection of traditional African poems, including Ancient Egyptian love songs.
Colonial era
While the West bears record of African literature from the period of colonisation and the slave trade, particularly of works by Africans using acquired Western languages as their medium of expression, the thriving oral traditions of the time – particularly if in a mother tongue, were not recognised for their artistic value or the richness and significance of their content.
Generated by the Atlantic slave trade and its opposition, from the 1780s onward, an astonishing and unprecedented array of texts appeared, both pro- and anti-slavery: poems, novels, plays, histories, sermons, speeches, newspaper columns and letters, travelogues, medical treatises, handbills, broadsides, songs, children's books. African authors writing in this period, along with the abolitionists and apologists, raise questions about the relation of British Romanticism to colonialism and slavery. Themes of liberation, independence and négritude among Africans in French-controlled territories, began to permeate African literature in the late colonial period between the end of World War I and independence. Léopold Sédar Senghor published the first anthology of French-language poetry written by Africans in 1948. He was one of the leaders of the négritude movement and eventual President of Senegal.
Liberation struggle and Independence era
It is the political, economic, social and cultural events of a society that shape its literature. In his essay "Homecoming" (1972), Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o makes this stance very clear when he says: