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

Whether it is acknowledged or not, African writers, and indeed poets, live within the confluence of two or more traditions/languages, and their poetics emerge from the spaces where these worlds and languages collide. This is a commentary on the review of M.M Carlin, which interrogates Ken Goodwin's textual analysis and evaluation of ten African poets. Goodwin held the under-studied poets to account, through western standards and traditions of poetry.

It is not surprising, perhaps due to the lack of understanding of what African poetry is, most critical conversation fixates on thematic content and the socio-political context in which the poetry exists, and its criticism is restricted and viewed only through that limited lens. Consequently, its merits are assessed on its relative "Africanness", which is defined largely along the same socio-political lines mentioned above.

In Carlin's review published in the Times Literary Supplement of 16th September 1983, he explained that Goodwin's book categorized the poets "roughly in the order of their Africanness, their dependence of European Models" which aided the summing up of a group that included what was described as the "Internationalists" which are the poets who remained perpetual captives of the British tradition of poetry (Dennis Brutus, Christopher Okigbo, Lenrie Peters and John Pepper Clark) and the second group which included poets like Taban, Awoonor and Soyinka, who synthesized indigenous African traditions and the European Traditions. And the last group who Goodwin claimed, "were able to write as Africans with only minimal influence from Europe".

A cursory look, at the Heinemann African writers' series which published poets like Christopher Okigbo, Gabriel Okara, Leopold Senghor, Tchicaya U'Tam'si among numerous others, makes the case that the series was already defining the African poetry "canon", which allowed for a more diverse representation of writing styles, influences and complexities of the broader African poetry landscape unlike Goodwin's categorization which defined African poetry from a reductionist perspective that paid no attention to the poetry that was emerging due to Africa's gruesome colonial history with Europe.

African poetry cannot be viewed "independent of European model" and certainly not dependent on a European model. To this point, this commentary will focus on the second group, specifically Wole Soyinka. Carlin's review expressed Eurocentric conceit, declaring that "…historians may one day conclude that French was the best European language for African poetry." Taking this expression at face value, the implication is that, even more than in African languages, African poetry flourishes most, in French. Perhaps Carlin's argument could be a comparison between French and English but that fails because why make such a comparison in the context of African poetry where both languages are not indigenous?

That declaration was made perhaps in a genuine fit of excitement that "the distribution of stress in French, the flexibility of French meter offered Francophone poets in Africa the right combination of ease and authority [while] English on the other hand, demands of a heavily stressed language, with metrical beat, together with an easygoing critical attitude, have—at least to begin with— resulted in a 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".

It is, however, a disingenuous assertion on the part of Carlin, who despite his declaration did not provide sufficient evidence to back it up, because there was only one francophone African poet, Lenrie Peters, in the list.

More so, that is a stunning surmising of what African poetry in English is, which is not only a great misreading but an acute imprudence that lies in the persistence of the patronizing colonial notion that all colonized people are seeking to enact the Caliban dynamic of attempting to "master" the language of the colonized. Reading influence in this limited political manner is both condescending and self-congratulatory, because African poets are contributing to the world of poetry, something that grows out of equally complex and profoundly sophisticated traditions that are not necessarily European.

Another implication of Carlin's assertion is that there were no original African poets, at least at that time, writing in English, which is self-contradictory of both himself and Goodwin's own categorization, which implied that poets like Soyinka wrote within the fringes and influences of both worlds, which at worst offers a hybridization that gives birth to a new language and perhaps tradition. Carlin's explanation that "the most interesting and durable poems of the writers presented in Understanding African Poetry are in the broadly political- that is, they have something to say" which infers that the African poet's politicization of poetry represents a dearth. He also stated that Goodwin's "mild chidings [was] respectful and even reverential in tone". This cynicism, however, suggests that the poetic value of the African poet is disconnected from poetics, and its strength is solely rooted in the subject. This does not consider that when a poem, for instance, captures the moment it yearns to represent, it causes an emotional reaction in its reader. Such a poem goes just beyond a reliance on subject for strength because it must have succeeded as a vehicle, found a language through which the subject could be experienced and understood. Goodwin stating that Afrikaans being a native European language points to a slight bias towards how African poetry is perceived under the scrutiny of western gaze. Afrikaans is perhaps a naturalized African language that evolved and developed out of a European language on the continent. Perhaps, historically, it cannot be considered indigenous to Africa like English and French, but still, hardly will both languages be considered as indigenous to Africa.

It is worthy to note that these African writers are writing fully aware of the European tradition, and wrestling with the indignity of having their own cultural and poetic traditions demeaned and degraded by European chauvinism. So, the poets are being influenced by European traditions, which all would agree, moved them, challenged them and "inspired" them. And inspiration may well be driven by the core impulse of the writer to find a voice ultimately truer to experience and culture through the powerful position of one feeling free to draw on any tradition presented to them out of a confidence in their grounding in language and place—in this case, wherever they are in Africa. What these critics are doing is infantilizing African writers who are in fact approaching their work with the authority of feeling able to appropriate from the western tradition to suit their purpose, and to, in the process, critique that very tradition. These critics are only able to see imitation, and incapable of seeing the African poet as writing with authority.

M.M Carlin offered a contradiction that is not only interesting but should have been an opportunity for him to find better answers to his curiosity. Carlin stated that "it would be impossible to find ten English poets of comparable age who had the same collective experiences of oppression, imprisonment, violence and war" as the African poets. His posture admits that African poets possess a genuine experience that "inspires far better poetry of their European counterparts", but flatly panders to the expectation that African poets should uphold a British/Western tradition, in this instance the sonnet, or be judged by a tradition, as he puts, that does not inspire the kind of authentic language that lived experiences do.

It is important to note that Wole Soyinka is not just an English speaker but also a Yoruba speaker, who is rooted in its traditions and like other bilingual or multilingual speakers, and poets influenced by the languages they speak.

It is true that both Carlin and Goodwin are writing outside of the African poetry tradition and experiencing it through a bias that is detrimental to their understanding it and writing in their ignorance of the poetic culture which is where the misreading of both Carlin and Goodwin emerges from and the unwillingness to see through a different lens.

Though Carlin recognized and paid attention to the influence that experiences complicate, in the poetics of these poets, there is seemingly a lack of acknowledgement of how, Yoruba which is Soyinka's first language complicates his writing in English, and amplifies everything from sentence construction to meter and ultimately rhythm, since his poetry exists in a reality that is an intersection of English and Yoruba.

Saddiq Dzukogi was born in Minna, Nigeria. He is a doctoral student in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He holds a BSc in Mass Communication from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. March 19, 2020.