A Survey of African Poetry in the London Times, Sunday Times, Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement 1865-1985

"Voice of the Poets," by Patrick Dickinson, "The Chosen Tongue: English Writing In The Tropical World" by Norman Jeffares, and "Scorning the Sonnet" by M.M. Carlin

There is no class distinction in the African writers of English poetry: only the distinction between writing well and writing badly. But they begin now. African has no culture in the sense that Greece and India have offered to the West moral ideas and myths of enduring value.

(Dickinson, from Voice of the Poets)

The epigraph above reflects the common racist rhetoric found in British criticism of mid-20th century African writers. On September 13, 1965 The Times Supplement On the Arts in the Commonwealth posted an article by contributor Patrick Dickinson titled "Voice of the Poets." In it, Dickinson examines the poetry written by commonwealth poets in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Africa, especially their relationship with, and ability to wield, an English language that is representative of place. Of the antipodes he says, "The problem of their poets has been and still is to write in a tongue which is their own, a rhythm of speech which reflects their own vernacular. But they do not want to be "regional"" (Dickinson). Unlike the Canadian poet, however, the African poet, Dickinson claims, is aware of other languages, very likely grew up speaking other languages, and therefore "may still be writing in translation" (Dickinson). He describes the African "fascination" with language as a detriment to creating a wholly African poetry removed from the shadow of the likes of Eliot. "African poetry it seems to me must be (and is) fascinated by language. "A primrose by the river's brim" is part of the conventional imagery of exile to Antipodians or Canadians. To an African, reading Wordsworth must be a mystery" (Dickinson).

Contemporary African writers such as Chimamanda Adichie and Nugugi Wa Thiongo among others have written about the "foreignness" of their English colonial education, specifically that the language of letters and learning, thus the language of social uplift, did not reflect their culture or communities. Never do they infer that this foreignness was based on a lack of understanding. On the contrary, the "mystery" of Wordsworth (if there was one) was about lack of representation, not an inability to decode the language of the colonizers. If they are mystified by anything, it's the culture of the colonizers, not the language they wield.

Dickinson uses "foreignness" as a way to explain this perceived African "fascination" with language. It is not an endearing fascination he speaks of, but a patronizing fascination that is rendered childlike in its awe of the toy hanging just out of reach. Not only does Dickinson's critique drip with condescension, but it is steeped in the false assumption that the African "fascination" with the English language is a barrier to writing evocatively and authentically about place:

African poets like Wole Soyinka or Christopher Okigbo are entrancing and entranced by language. Either they write of people or ideas. There is no yearn for the exposition of landscape to bolster nationality. Their aim is to write like... how would this sentence go on?...Like T.S. Eliot? He may well stand for this sort of expatriate poetry. Eliot changed his personal voice; his rhythms are neither Boston nor East Coker but rather from Atlantis. English African poetry has at the moment this quality of nowhere, of being translated from a language no one has ever conversed in.

(Dickinson)

This sentiment, while false, is also fundamentally xenophobic. To believe that understanding English literature is some kind of inherited, quasi-biological undertaking is a highly problematic assumption steeped in inherent racist ideology. In addition, Dickinson's definition of place is limited and based entirely on an English understanding of what constitutes landscape/culture and thus what could and should "bolster nationality." Dickinson is not the only one.

If we look at "Eng. Lit. expands," a 1969 review by Norman Jeffares of The Chosen Tongue: English Writing in the Tropical World , an anthology edited by Gerald Moore, we see similar problematic rhetoric used to critique African writers. In this case Jeffares juxtaposes the African with the West Indian writer. While Jeffares doesn't go as far as Dickinson in claiming that African writers fail to yearn for an exposition of landscape and thus produce writing insulated from the discourse of nationalism, he does suggest that the African writer is too imaginatively-preoccupied with, and limited by, their country of origin. Of the West Indian writer, Jeffares says, "The West Indian… speaks an international language, the unique language of the British West Indies dialect forms, a medley of structures and vocabulary derived from non-English sources" (Jeffares).

His thoughts on the African writer are quite different— "He finds more scope in living and working in his own country" (Jeffares). While the West Indian writer calls forth the shores of Africa, the African writer, according to Jeffares, does not call forth the islands. Where the "West Indian, makes his pilgrimage, searching for his ancestral memories, travelling to a distant town, and through time, through history, to a new knowledge of himself" and back again, "for the African, what is past or passing or to come makes up the contemporary community: and the modern African writer often reacts violently against it" (Jeffares).

Jeffares does go on to list a handful of African writers that seem to make up an exception to his claim: Soyinka, Awoonor-Williams, Achebe, Okigbo and Clark. "The richness, the range of choice, open to the West African writer, both in subject and style, is vast" (Jeffares), but apparently this richness is only "open" to the African writer, not accessed or utilized by the majority of African writers of the time. This criticism feeds into the all too common, yet troubling narrative, that Africa, and it's cultural and artistic productions, is in a constant state of becoming, but never arriving, an adolescent that never reaches adulthood. This intentionally benevolent narrative has been all too successful in rendering Africa and its productions as in need of patronage, instead of a multitude of existing cultures with "moral ideas and myths of enduring value" (Dickinson) of their own.

However, this was not a sentiment unique to the 1960's. Almost fifteen years later, contributor M.M. Carlin reviews another anthology of African writing for The Times Literary Supplement titled "Understanding African Poetry: A Study of Ten Poets" edited by Ken Goodwin. In "Scorning the Sonnet" Carlin echoes Dickinson's claim that the English language and the African writer do not mix. For Carlin, French is a more nuanced and eloquent language for the African writer. While English, with its heavy stresses and "strong metrical beat, together with an easygoing critical attitude, have – at least to begin with – resulted in far too much African poetry whose flatness only serves to point up the "influences" – Hopkins, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Dylan Thomas – the outcome of which is often mere pastiche" (Carlin). According to Carlin, the durable African poems are the ones that are explicitly political by the likes of writers such as Okigbo, Soyinka, Okara, Owooner and few others. Like Jeffares, Carlin looks towards the future for the African writers who will one day wield an English representative of Africa and not it's canonical figures.

What these critiques make clear is that for the African writer in the 20th century to be well-received by the British literati was an acrobatic undertaking, a circus of mirrors. It required a multiplicity of allegiances and back bends that would exhaust the most dexterous of English language speakers. I'd guess that for the African writers of the time, what Carlin, Jeffares and Dickinson's racist gaze refused to see, was not only exhausting—it was deafening.

Note:
M.M. Carlin was a British teacher of English Literature in Africa. The specific university and country is not readily available. He seems to have published mostly in the 1960's. The articles from this period (available online) were published by Indiana University Press. There is little information online about Carlin, but based on the subject matter of his articles, it's possible to assume he lived and taught in South Africa. Carlin's work focuses mostly on critiquing published articles by English men on the state of Africa and its cultural productions. Other works by Carlin include film reviews and a critique of an article about revolution and partition in South Africa published by the English South African journal, Encounter, of which he writes, "There is a South Africa but she does not know herself" and "Perhaps the South African English, in their trance of dilemma, are the first actual South Africans?"

Jamaica Baldwin is a poet, essayist and creative non-fiction writer. Jamaica Baldwin received her MFA from Pacific University Oregon and currently lives in Lincoln, NE where she is pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. March 18, 2020