In addition, for centuries secular and devotional Arabic poetry has stretched southwards through the Sahel and into the continent from the Maghreb, inspiring local poets. Europhone poetry – particularly written verse in French and English – was a relatively late arrival to the scene, following in the wake of European imperial expansion in the 1880s. In a ‘give-and-take’ movement that typifies African cultural history, poets in local communities absorbed and rejected elements of these foreign forms, adapting them to suit their own repertoires.

In the vibrant space of African poetic creativity, there are no simple oppositions to be made between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ modes, nor should ‘traditional’ refer simply to oral African-language poetry and ‘modern’ to printed Europhone poetry. In their innovative structures and experiments with language, Africa’s English-language poets reveal that there is a dynamic interaction between so-called traditional and modern forms. English-language poets are not cut off from their cultural heritage by their choice of medium. Many poets work within a shared aesthetic framework in which the role of the poet is collectively agreed. Nevertheless, English-language poetry is inextricable from the continent’s colonial history, and poets writing in English are subject to the pressures of that history, including an immersion in the Euro-Christian tradition and in the European literary canon.

If a boundary exists at all, it is in the separation of ‘oral’ from ‘written’ genres, particularly in the different ways in which these genres interact with their audiences. Many scholars emphasise that oral poetry is performed with the accompaniment of musicians, drummers and dancers, in the presence of live audiences who often participate in events; by contrast, the vast majority of printed poems are in ex-colonial languages, or in Arabic, and appear upon the quieter stage of the printed text. However, these boundaries have been challenged in poetry since the 1980s, for younger English-language poets have worked hard to stage performances of their poetry, and have scripted drums and dancers into their verse.

Since the birth of the world-wide web, poets in Africa and the diaspora have exchanged ideas and composed poetry on-line, making use of the web to develop new modes of expression. Until recently, however, there has been a dearth of publicly accessible African poetry websites.

Exciting recent developments – especially the ‘Poetry Translation Centre’ at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London – will make previously inaccessible poems available in English on-line. This material in translation, drawn from a wide variety of African languages, is likely to shift the terms of the literary debate away from the ‘either-or’ position that has dominated the consideration of oral in relation to written forms, towards a more complex and dynamic appreciation of the cross-fertilisations that occur between Africa’s diverse poetic traditions. Given the multiplicity of African vernaculars – up to 1,500 separate languages have been identified on the continent – such translation projects will enrich English-language poetry with material that has been found, rather than lost, in translation.

In terms of web-based resources, it is necessary to ‘watch this space’ for new developments like the Poetry Translation Centre. It is also possible that future African poets working in English will make use of web technology to give performances of their work to virtual audiences whose collective responses, feedback and participation will regenerate the aesthetic space of oral performance in the relatively new forum of the internet.

Stephanie Newell lectures in Postcolonial Literature in the Department of English at the University of Sussex. Her research interests include West African popular literature, postcolonial theory, colonial newspapers. Alongside several edited collections and articles on these topics, her major publications include: Ghanaian Popular Fiction: ‘Thrilling Discoveries in Conjugal Life’ and Other Tales (James Currey and Ohio University Press, 2000); Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana (Manchester U.P., 2002).

Note: In addition to the sites listed below, American Universities provide some useful resources (see e.g., African poetry courses run by the English Departments at Stanford University and the University of Florida).

http://www.africaresource.com/poe
Biographical profiles and poems by many of the continent’s leading new writers, with a bias towards West Africa.

http://www.postcolonialweb.org
General information about literature, politics and culture in a wide range of African and other postcolonial countries.

http://www.poetryinternational.org
Select an African country from the drop-down menu in the top left hand corner for a taste of the best poetry. Currently featured: Morocco; South Africa; Zimbabwe.

http://www.poetrytranslation.soas.ac.uk
Website for the new Poetry Translation Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). Funded by the Arts Council and SOAS, the Centre provides translations from non-European languages into English. The ever-expanding site contains poems in translation from a wide variety of African languges.

http://www.southafrica.co.za/arts/poetry.html
A site containing links to many South African websites, including the zany www.pix.za/barefoot.press with its range of new South African poetry.

Additional resources:

Encycopedias of African literature are an excellent supplement to the web. The following are highly recommended for the information they provide on individual poets, literary movements, and critical debates across Africa, including the Maghreb:

Gikandi, S. (ed), Encyclopedia of African Literature (London and NY: Routledge, 2003)

Killam, D. and R. Rowe (eds.), The Companion to African Literatures (Oxford: James Currey, 2000).

Further reading: a selection of anthologies of African poetry in English.

Amateshe, A. D. (ed), An Anthology of East African Poetry (Harlow: Longman, 1988)

Chipasula, S. P. and F. M. Chipasula (eds.), The Heinemann Book of African Women’s Poetry (Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1995).

Couzens, T. and E. Patel (eds.), The Return of the Amazi Bird: Black South African Poetry, 1891-1981 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1982).

Maja-Pearce, A. (ed), The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English (Oxford: Heinemann, 1990)

Moore, G. and U. Beier (eds.), The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984)

Nwoga, D. I. (ed), West African Verse (Harlow: Longman, 1967)

Senanu, K. E. and T. Vincent (eds.), A Selection of African Poetry (Harlow: Longman, 1988)

Soyinka, W. (ed), Poems of Black Africa (London: Secker and Warburg, 1975)

Background reading:

Fraser, R. West African Poetry: A Critical History (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1986)

Haynes, J. African Poetry and the English Language (London: Macmillan, 1987)

Jones, E. D., E. Palmer and M. Jones (eds.), Oral and Written Poetry in African Literature Today: 16 (James Currey: London, 1988)

Ngara, E. (ed.), New Writing from Southern Africa (James Currey et al.: London, 1996)