Anthology Manuscript Queries

 EDITORIAL 

West African Poetry  

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I would like to lay a premise for a discussion of West African poetry by first of all defining it with reference the Master thesis of Moses Temidayo Akinyele Changes and Development in West African Poetry: Nigeria.

According to Moses Temidayo Akinyele West African poetry will have ‘wit...and lyricism in some ways which characterize the poems.’ Akinyele also argues that, ‘The uniquely rhythmic, same-cadence and wise nature of West African poetry is inherited from its oral tradition.’

In Adedayo Agarau’s poem, ‘Arrival,’ we see evidence of  Akinyele’s description of an African narrative poet who ‘flawlessly transitions between the spectator's previous state of half-consciousness and current level of wakefulness.’  In ‘Arrival’ the poet relays a chaotic nightmare in which, ‘the hunter’s gun turns toward the house of sand where my body hides its flight.’

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       'The wise nature of West African poetry is inherited from its oral tradition.’

The poem ‘Arrival’ mainly recounts a dream the poet had but he wakes up in a ‘turquoise blue room’- to find to his dismay - the scary aunt has transformed into a meowing cat and as in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991), where Azaro the protagonist wakes up in the spirit world surrounded by witches. Agarau’s poem opens with a setting,

      ‘In the evening / rain pours outside/ the town /’

West African poets are expert storytellers, according to Moses Temidayo Akinyele, while discussing the nature of storytelling in his thesis paper in 2024. I want to add that this feature could be seen in the poem, ‘Vultures’ by Chinua Achebe and ‘Arrival’ by Adedayo Agarau. The later has characters, a somehow convoluted plot, a climax and a resolution in his poem, ‘Arrival; ‘ listed as: his great aunt, the protagonist-narrator, a mother, a father, a son, his grandfather, his grandmother, the muezzin, a congregation, a woman selling groundnuts, singing children, choristers and earth mothers. Non-human characters include: the river, the house, the cat, bats et cetera.

   ‘Arrival’ quickly launch the reader into a heightened action in lines 5-8:

   'but my great aunt / turns rat/ poison in amala for me /’

The plot in the dream  climaxes when the narrator awakens in the blue room as a baby in a cot to find witches are gathered around him. His body is being picked with a needle.

West African poets draw into a repertoire of cultural beliefs as in, ’Arrival’ where the poet writes in his indigenous language, (Yoruba).

Riddles and proverbs in Nigerian oral traditions become metaphors in West African poetry, Moses Temidayo Akinyele purports. ‘West African poets cherish and hold up [a] cultural identity,’ in an ‘intentional  way.’ Writing (these sort of poems) enables the  ‘material and cultural wealth of a nation[to be]…held and transmitted from one generation to the next,’ observes Moses Temidayo Akinyele. The lines, ‘earth mothers spent the night sealing me dead inside my mother’s womb,’ remind me of the turmoil of Azaro in Ben Okri’s  The Famished Road which references Nigerian traditional beliefs of spits trapping unborn babies in another world, a belief played out in Nollywood films too.

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      'Whether you read the poems of Adedayo Agarau, Christopher Okigbo or Chinua Achebe you would agree these is a rich tapestry in West African poetry woven into its clouded weft of threads which readers from all over the world can enjoy.' 

          B. James.

References

1. Temidayo Moses Akinyele (2024)  ‘Changes and Development in West African Poetry: Nigeria as A Case Study.’  Published by Innsbruck University, Austria.

1. ‘Arrival’ by Adedayo Agarau (2024) Published online by Isele Magazine.