Critical overview of mutations in some Contemporary African Poetry

The state of contemporary African poetry today reflects the mutations it has undergone from the precolonial, colonial, to post-independence periods. Before colonization, African oral poetry (songs, rituals, incantations, etc) was peculiar and depended on the performer, the audience, and the context. Iyasere (2006:326) characterised this uniqueness as “a communal literature”. Over the years, this uniqueness has been permeated by some globalising wave of hybridity and cultural mutations giving rise to the complex contemporary African poetry we have today as exemplified in the works of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Nol Alembong and Oscar Labang. This paper, therefore, attempts a postmodern/postcolonial criticism of these selected poets to delineate the extent to which their poetry project an African consciousness at the expense of a consumerist multicultural set-up that privileges the subjugation of the African identity. It further demonstrates the nature of postmodern African poetry and reveals that contemporary African poetry is an offshoot of shifts in time and space confounded in experimentation, influence and the sublimation of personal experiences.

Keywords: Postmodern, Contemporary, Criticism, Poetry, African, Culture/al, Identity.