Of Poets and Poems
Published On July 25, 2015 » 9764 Views» By Administrator Times » Entertainment, Theatre
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Zam ArtsTHIS week’s column takes a twist towards an examination of Zambia’s literary landscape. It calls to investigation the literary works that have taken place in Zambia, if any, particularly in major disciplines of theater, fiction and poetry; development in creative writing and book publishing after independence.
It is an open secret that our literary terrain has been dry, barren and cracked. And by way of the natural law of course barrenness is often kindred to its attendant cousins: famine, sickness and death. It baffles the mind that although at independence we had only a hundred graduates from the University of Zambia, we still cannot produce a writer of international standards to stand tall among the men and women of letters of the world; fifty odd years down the rugged road.
And yet, as we shall see later, we have examples of West and East Africa where the development of creative writing is distinguished since the early 1960s.
West Africa: A brief historical perspective
History holds that the development of literature in Africa had an early start in West Africa rather than East or Southern Africa. The readers will recall that in one of our columns we cited three notable figures in the annals of Black slavery; namely, Olaudah Aquino, Juan Latino and Phillis Weatley.
The three slaves became successful writers where they finally found an abode in the lands of foreign nations. With that part of sweet and sour literary history behind us, in 1957 Bassir published an anthology of West African verse marking a separation of 170 years after the Aquino period. The growth and development of literature in West Africa is normally attributed to the literary activities at Ibadan University in the 1950s and after.
The setting up of the syllabus in African literature at the university was a great stimulation for students of the day with support from lecturers. Adrian Roscoe in his work of criticism, ‘Mother is Gold’ brings to the fore several factors that went into this stimulus.
A number of literary journals and magazines were set up to encourage indigenous writers at Ibadan. J. P Clark set up a magazine called ‘Horn,’ an off- shoot of Black Orpheus established and edited by a German scholar, Ulli Beier. Ulli’s visionary leadership led him to set up ‘Mbari Writers and Artists Club.’
Two events are of great significance during this period because as a result of this development a publishing firm was born; meanwhile, the Club opened its doors to a flurry of literary criticism. These outlets became important for the works of writers like Soyinka, Clark and Okara—the latter, a kind of still -born child who was not part of the university education earned by his friends but worked as a bookbinder and later a government official.
Despite his humble background, Okara is one of Africa’s finest poets whose talent his university trained friends recognized and published in the Black Orpheus.  As Black Orpheus grew in scope, it extended its tentacles across the borders to stimulate new writings from Ghana, Awono-Williams, Gambia’s Lenre Peters including closer home, the versatile short story writer, Alex La Guma of South Africa.
This period was marked by an upsurge of literary output and in order to narrow the gap between script production and publishing there was a need for more publishing companies. Another initiative was on cue to answer the call, ‘Nigerian Magazine,’ giving vent to a growing number of writers such as Robert July, Mabel Segun and others.  The history of ‘human and institutional influence’ cannot be complete if no mention is made about  the ‘Citadel Book Limited’ set up by Achebe and his friend Okigbo at Enugu with immediate plans to publish Okara’s poetry. However, the project could not see the light of day as Okigbo, Africa’s arguably finest poet sadly fell at Nsukka as the Biafran war broke out in 1967.
East Africa:  A brief historical perspective
If there is any difference in the development of literature in East Africa compared to West Africa it should all lie in the energy and revolutionary spirit of its actors. Late comers as they might have been to the history of African literature, the writers rallied together to wage war against an imperial cultural system whose expiry time had come.
We must also remember the part played by the eccentric Taban Lo Liyong in the fight for the literary cause. Before his return from America where he studied at Harward and Iowa his ‘big head’ (I saw it during the international writer’s conference of 2005 in Kampala, Uganda, and almost touched it courtesy of the British Council) one day got into some trouble:
I walked to my apartment, threw my brief case on the bed and sat next to it. I then held my big head between my powerful hands. I squeezed it, and squeezed hard, till it thought. When thoughts came, they poured like tropical rain: big and fast.  I pulled out my pencil and paper and wrote fast, capturing every drop of thought.
Well, Taban’s weirdly- shaped head returned to East Africa at an opportune time just when it was needed, juicy and fruitful.
According to Adrian Roscoe in ‘Uhuru’s Fire’ there were other heads (but not as big and hands  not as powerful) around Nairobi fresh from studies abroad with varying degrees of success in published works; they included Ngugi wa Thiong’o,  Kenyan novelist who had just placed in his bag, ‘A Grain of Wheat,’  coming back from Leeds, Philip Ochieng, an accomplished journalist also fresh from America and writing profusely for the ‘Daily Nation,’ the multi-talented, Okot p’ Bitek still basking in his laurels after the much-publicised and read, ‘Song of Lawino.’
Then there was Taban himself, an ‘agent provocateur’ whose surreal head had just given birth to an abnormal child, ‘The Last Word.’ This is a little band of men, you might say, but it was a literary guerrilla of sorts armed with pen and tongue.
They strategically gained entry into the cultural soul of the University College of Nairobi and East Africa. Thankfully, the head of the English Department, Professor George Wing had just left for Canada to take up another job—the last bastion of long standing of English cultural hegemony had finally crumbled. Described as ‘the whitest department north of Pretoria,’ Taban and his colleagues fought tooth and nail to secure it.
The battle was taken to the board rooms, corridors, streets and public lectures while Ochieng threw guided missiles from his ‘Daily Nation’ window until one day he announced victory when the Department of English changed its name to the Department of Literature and Languages with a sharp focus on African literature. This is how Ochieng celebrated the victory:
Being a tolerated eavesdropper, I have been able to gather that very drastic changes are in hand for the English Department at the University College of Nairobi. The proposed changes, a little bird tells me, have been accepted in principle by the Faculty of Arts Board and will be effective next academic year… Our University must begin to produce citizens of the world and not parochial Black Englishmen.
These root- and -branch changes that took place in East Africa in the 1960s are an important departure for understanding our own situation. In the next week’s column we will focus on Zambia’s literary episode, look out for it.
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