Items

• Voices from South Africa

  Laurence Whistler writes a generally praising critique of South African Poetry, complimenting Guy Butler and R. N. Currey, but suggesting "had the compilers omitted four-fifths of their contributors and increased the contributions of the remainder they could have produced an impressive anthology." At the end of his critique, Whistler questions if there is "such a thing" as South African poetry. He points out that the "liveliest creative minds" desert South Africa for England, calling them "poetic deserters."
• Tradition Gone Stale-

  Ulli Beier critiques the collection of Swahili poetry. He suggests that we should be grateful for the collection, in that "very little is known about African poetry anywhere on our continent," but he also argues that this collection suffers from translation and the fact that the Swahili poetry is meant to be sung or recited to music. He concludes that the poetry in the volume is worth more to "students of East African ethnolography and above all to Islamic scholars," but not to literary critics.
• Tracts for the times: Art, Dialogue and Outrage by Wole Soyinka

  Andrew St. George reviews Wole Soyinka's essay collection, suggesting, "Soyinka sparkles and delights. He carries his credentials lightly but likes the sound they make when they drop...But criticism for Soyinka travels both ways down a broad street; these essays foster a taste for the inordinate and mischievous which works with and against Nigerian culture."
• Through the Drum

  [Excerpt]: "A comparison of two recent critical studies of African fiction raises the whole question of whether its effective criticism demands the isolation of an appropriate aesthetic, distinct from that assumed in teh study of the European or American novel. Any reader turning first to Eustace Palmer, as being the African in this brace of critics, is likely to be disappointed in his search for special illumination.... The collection of recorded interviews with various authors assembled in African Writers Talking derives its value from the fact that most of the writers have been interviewed several times, over a period of some years, and by different interlocutors. The result is a considerable illumination of the developing consciouness in men like Achebe, Okigbo, Awoonor, Ngugi, and Soyinka; consciousness about their own work, the nature of the art in which they work, and the degree of their obligation to be quite consciously teachers, stimulators and even admonishers of their societies...."
• The World of Books

  Desmond MacCarthy praises and reviews Roy Campbell's newest volume of poems, "Adamastor." MacCarthy writes that: "It is seldom that the critic has the privilege of assisting at the birth of a book destined to a long life, and he may well be embarrassed. I have no doubt at all that this one which has fallen into my hands is destined to be famous."
• The Times Diary: Poetic Justice

  [Full text]: "The prosaic difficulties of a troubled world have complicated work on an international reference book on poets who write in English. With a preface by the Poet Laureate, C. Day Lewis, Contemporary Poets of the English Language is the first book on the subject for more than 10 years and the only one to include non-white poets from Asia and Africa: it will be published in October by The St. James Press of Chicago and London. Its American editor-in-chief, Mrs. Rosalie Murphy, says she ran into many problems. In Nigeria, the questionnaire sent to Wole Soyinka was not passed on to him in prison, where he has been for two years; while the entry on Christopher Okigbo had to be dropped after Mrs. Murphy had confirmed a report that he had been killed in the civil war. Then there were many black South African poets who have escaped from or otherwise left the country and still move from place to place: Bloke Modisane, believed to have left South Africa on foot in 1950, was traced to London. Minor racial complications occurred in this country, too. Most poets from Wales put down "Welsh" as their nationality, although some admitted to "Anglo-Welsh." Most Scots preferred "British," while some northern Irish put "British-Irish." In America, nearly all Negroes called themselves "Black," although LeRoi Jones added exotically "African-American-Ancient Egyptian."
• The people who are Africa

  [Excerpt]: "Chinua Achebe is often called the father of the modern African novel, as Bernth Lindfors attests in the introduction to Early Achebe, his perceptive collection of essays on Achebe's output between 1951 and 1966. While this praise may seem exaggerated, it is not unwarranted -- though to regard Achebe's first and most famous novel, Things Fall Apart, published in London in 1958, as an "African" novel only underplays its status as one of the most influential post-war novels in English, one that still possesses the power to startle the reader with its vivid description of a complex society in the throes of momentous change. It was the first in the African Writers Series, the Heinemann Educational Books project that revolutionized the field of of anglophone African writing by providing literature for African readers by African writers.... Ike Osodi, the journalist character in Anthills of the Savannah (modelled in part on Achebe's late poet-fighter friend Christopher Okigbo), is a spokesman for this middle ground..."
• The music of Milan

  [A review of Italian poet Vittorio Sereni's collections]...The first part of Sereni's masterpiece, "Un posto di vacanza" contains two snatches of quotation in italics. While his few notes for Stella variabile (1981) had indicated that the second is from his translation of "Ton Oeuvre" by the Malagasay poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, he had seen no need to point out that the first was of lines from an epigram by Fortini, "Sereni esile mito" (Sereni slender myth), which had cited his own war poem "Italiano in Grecia" to criticize its "perplessa musica" and attack his belief in youth: "Non sempre giovinezza e verita", Fortini writes (Youth is not always truth).
• The Lyrics of the President

  "This appears to be the first book-length study of President Senghor's poetry available in English. That fact alone is surprising, when one reflects that the past few years have seen the appearance of studies of Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka (three), Mongo Beti, and Peter Abrahams...Nevertheless, his book has the important merits of being pleasant to read, freshly written, free from any thesis-like fussiness and innocent of obscurity."
• The editor lied

  John Haynes notes that this collection of African Poetry in English emphasizes poets born after 1945 and has a distinguishing factor of featuring "poetry in the shadow of police states."
• The Climate of Taste

  G. S. Fraser reviews the new anthology, The Faber Book of Modern Verse, which is intended to complement the previous version, the Faber Book of Modern Verse, collected by Michael Roberts. This new anthology was edited by two poets, John Heath-Stubbs and David Wright. Of David Wright, Fraser says: "...readers of anthologies, however, will have enjoyed both his poems on classical themes and his comic and satirical pieces, which have something of the robustness of similar work by his fellow-countryman, Mr. Roy Campbell."
• Stranger's Voice

  Hugo Young interviews Oswald Mtshali on his poetry collection, "Sounds of a Cowhide Drum," which sold over 16,000 copies. Young writes that Mtshali is "the poet of oppression--humorous, often bitter-sweet, rarely vengeful but still a unique chronicler of apartheid from the black underside of it."
• Spring Announcements

  The short announcement mentions the release of Francis Cary [sic] Slater's new collection of poetry, "Dark Folk and Other Poems," along with a few other works also being published by Blackwoods.
• South African Poet

  "This volume gathers examples from the best work of one of the foremost South African poets of today. The quality that strikes one particularly in Mr. Slater's verse is its ability to achieve a quiet subtlety of rhythm: it flows with a varied cadence, without monotony, carefully preventing its metre from stamping, or its rhyme from rinigng, to the disturbance of its subdued harmonies. Its content is chiefly remarkable for its sensitive feeling for the African landscape. Mr. R. C. K. Ensor's brief biographical note of the poet which introduces the book is most useful."
• South African Bard

  The critic reviews Francis Carey Slater's new poetry collection. Of Slater's last collection, the critic writes "The history of his literary achievements, which grew from apparently unpromising circumstances, deepened the interest of the book; the honesty of the writing was evident in the varied quality of the poems. Some of them were old fashioned and derivative...but there were thers of special power." For this new collection, the critic suggests that Slater's "poetic character is complex; the romantic, the stoic and the satiric unite in it."
• Songs from the grasslands

  Gerald Moore praises Okot p'Bitek's collection of Acoli traditional songs. He suggests that the songs and poems collected here have merit on their own accord, rather than to be used as only ethnographic material "to be eviscerated." Of Okot p'Bitek himself, Moore writes, "Those familiar with his own poetry, especially The Song of Lawino, will recognize here the indigenous poetic tradition in which that fine work is embedded. The bitters of Lawino's sense of betrayal is not a personal but a cultural bitterness."
• Scorning the Sonnet

  Carlin writes of Goodwin's collection: "The strength of the book is not Ken Goodwin's criticism...but the arrangement and explication of these ten poets according to a scheme which forms a socio-cultural description of African poetry. In this respect, Professor Goodwin is enlightening and instructive, for he places his poets... roughly in the order of their Africanness, their independence of European models."
• Revving up

  Terry Eagleton writes on Christopher Hope, a white South African poet. Of his poetry, Eagleton says, "Mr. Hope's poems do not easily yield sympathy to their subjects... It seems rather the necessary stringency of a poet who needs to feel his way back into an increasingly alien world by a process of precise observation, clarifying and defining its textures so that perception itself becomes a kind of moral act."
• Praise poet in Paris

  Sheila Mason reviews a collection of poetry, translated by Melvin Dixon, of Leopold Sedar Senghor. Mason writes, "From Senegal's indpendence, in 1960, until 1980 when he relinquished the Presidency of his nation, Leopold Sedar Senghor dominated the West African political and cultural scene as Maecenas, political philosopher and literary theorist and, not least, as a practising poet. Since his elevation in retirement to the Academie Francaise in 1983 and his move to Paris, the turmoil of his continent's political fortunes have so dimmed this renown that reappraisals of his writing now seem overdue. Melvin Dixon's English rendition of the definitive body of his poetry will, it is to be hoped, encourage this process." Mason traces the history of the negritude movement and Senghor's involvement. She also criticizes some of the translation by Melvin Dixon, but ultimately praises the collection: "Thus, while inadvertent infelicities occasionally muffle the poetry's African voice, nevertheless Melvin Dixon achieves that rarest of feats in the translation of poetry: he recreates Leopold Senghor in our own tongue, exhibiting with unflagging good faith his universality as a poet of love, of nature, of war and, rarest of modern accomplishments, of praise.
• Poets from Abroad

  A short review of the collection Poets in South Africa. Author suggests that "the insularity of the British" is emphasized by this collection, as he doubts many would have heard of the poets in the collection. The author suggests that the poets in the collection "are...a remarkably talented lot with, among them, a few who would be outstanding company, but who are largely unknown outside the Union."
• Poetry International

  "The sixth Poetry International from June 25 to June 30, will again be divided between the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. At the Queen Elizabeth Hall on June 29 and 30 poets from six countries will read their own work--preceded where necessary by English translation... Poetry International has presented more than 50 poets from 19 countries, and this year it will have its first South African, Oswald Mtshali. Mr. Mtshali lives in Johannesburg and his book of poems, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, which ran to five reprints in South Africa, was published in England last year. He will appear at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on June 29..."
• Poetry from Africa

  Gerald Moore first critically evaluates the poems included in the collection edited by Langston Hughes; he suggests that while "the accomplished young Nigerian poets Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Gabriel Okara, and Christopher Okigbo suffer from being placed immediately after no fewer than 22 poems from Ghana and Liberia, of which only four by Kwesi Brew and one (translated from Twi) by A. A. Opoku rise above the level of mediocrity." About another poem by Richard Rive, he suggests that "any reader opening the book at this point might be forgiven for flinging it through the window." On the second review, the biography of L S. Senghor, Moore writes that Armand Guibert puts together this "short biogrpahical introduction, a selection of poetry interlarded with exegesis and footnotes, a couple of prose extracts, a dialogue with the poet, a selection of review notices and a bibliography."
• Poet of Senegal

  Gerald Moore reviews two selections of Senghor's work; one with an introductory essay from Armand Guibert, wherein "he offers a good deal of material on the poet's origins and the formation of his style" followed by a collection of his work; and the second as Senghor's first new book of poetry for five years, which Moore calls "a disappointment." Moore ends the review by suggesting that "Africa has moved into a new era...of more direct self-expression free from obsessive reactions against assimilation, colonialism, and so forth" and that Senghor has "failed to make a new exploration of experience and his poetry has lost some of its relevance."
• Poet among the Presidents of Africa

  John Dickie and Alan Rake created a compendium of information about leaders and Presidents of different African nations, which critic John Young calls "useful and surprisingly readable."
• Orpheus in Africa

  [Excerpt]: "Both these anthologies have come together largely by chance. Both editors deny, in remarkably similar language, that they started out with the intention of making an anthology. Ulli Beier has drawn his material from the best stories which have appeared over the past five years in the magazine Black Orpheus, of which he has been one of the editors from its inception in 1957.... Cook's collection has an even closer university connexion, being derived from Penpoint, which was founded in 1958-59, the magazine of the English Department of Makerere University College in Kampala, the capital of Uganda...The Black Orpheus collection represents the second generation. In West Africa the use of English is long domesticated and now comes the urge to play with it. There is nothing here by Amos Tutuola, the first of the Nigerians to erupt into the consciousness of the European reading public with his startling word-play and fantastic subjects, but Gabriel Okara from Eastern Nigeria carries the game even further but also the syntax of his native Ijaw..."