Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- West Africa: State borders and principal ethnic groupings
- Introduction
- 1 From oral to written verse: development or depletion?
- 2 Ladies and gentlemen
- 3 The négritude movement
- 4 Poetry and the university, 1957–63
- 5 The achievement of Christopher Okigbo
- 6 Continuity and adaptation in Ghanaian verse, 1952–71
- 7 Two Ijo poets
- 8 ‘Psalmody of sunsets’: The career of Lenrie Peters
- 9 The road to Idanre, 1959–67
- 10 The poet and war, 1966–70
- 11 The poetry of dissent, 1970–80
- 12 The return to orality
- A guide to availability
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- West Africa: State borders and principal ethnic groupings
- Introduction
- 1 From oral to written verse: development or depletion?
- 2 Ladies and gentlemen
- 3 The négritude movement
- 4 Poetry and the university, 1957–63
- 5 The achievement of Christopher Okigbo
- 6 Continuity and adaptation in Ghanaian verse, 1952–71
- 7 Two Ijo poets
- 8 ‘Psalmody of sunsets’: The career of Lenrie Peters
- 9 The road to Idanre, 1959–67
- 10 The poet and war, 1966–70
- 11 The poetry of dissent, 1970–80
- 12 The return to orality
- A guide to availability
- Index
Summary
In 1950 a slim, cyclostyled volume of lyrical verse appeared in Londonderry, Northern Ireland under the name of a young research scientist of West African origin. It was prefaced by these remarks:
The African has an inborn sense of rhythm, a tolerably good ear for music, and a sense of colour harmony. He is spontaneous and frank when dealing with his own people.
How then is it that the Negro in West Africa has done so little creative writing with his incomparable gift of song?
I do not propose to give any answers to these questions, except to remark that the poverty of literary effort on the West coast induced me to write, after an absence of well nigh twenty years, about the haunts of my childhood and youth.
If in this attempt I should succeed in inducing one West African to burst into song and sing of the beauties of our motherland, and of our heroes, then I shall have exceeded my wildest ambitions.
It is remarkable how little poetical work was forthcoming in Ireland till the middle half of the eighteenth century. And yet how great now is their contribution to English letters.
The book was called Between the Forest and the Sea and its author Dr Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe, was until then known as a specialist in human ailments with a lively side-line in anthropology and history.
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- Chapter
- Information
- West African PoetryA Critical History, pp. 20 - 41Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986