Critical Issues in Anglophone Cameroonian Poetry

Critical Issues in Anglophone Cameroonian Poetry brings together eight major Anglophone Cameroonian poets which can be classified under three categories: “criers”, “sayers” and “sages”. In the first category, the criers, we have John Ngong Kum, Bate Besong, Gahlia Gwangwa’a, Fru Doh and Mathew Takwi; in the second, the sayers, Bongasu-Tanla-Kishani and Nol Alembong, and in the third, the sages, Bernard Fonlon. The criers, as their taxonomy implies, cry their outrage. They are the disconsolate voices that echo the collective pain, that register the raw feel of wrong. Their poetry simmers with the fury of the betrayal of indigenous trust. It is a poetry of indictment and dismissal. The sayers are no less alert to wrong, but they tend to be of a more sedate temperament. They say rather than cry, and maybe for that reason their message settles more easefully. As for the sages, they are the backbone of collective survival. They see ahead, guided by what they know of the past, and provide direction. Finally, the ultimate contention of this book is that the politicization of Anglophone Cameroonian poetry has not led to a decline in its artistry.