blogging the ala: almost wrapping things up...

One of the great delights of these conferences has always been walking away (or flying -- or in this instance driving off) with a healthy stack of books. Granted, sometimes the enthusiasm prematurely and the books gather dust on the shelves. But other times I dive right in.

This year, it seems, I lie somewhere in between -- too many meetings and work to do, both at the conference and at home, to have done anything more than crack and browse those books that I've gathered, but not suffering any lack of desire to see where they will take me.

Last night, at the author reading, I picked up the following:

• 25 New Nigerian Poets by Toyin Adewale (ed)
• The Dream in the Next Body by Gabeba Baderoon
• The Tale of the Harmattan by Tanure Ojaide
• and Niyi Osundare's Early Birds: Poems for Junior Secondary Schools (Books Two and Three)

And today, on the final walk-through of the exhibit area, I gobbled up the following from the African Books Collective table -- moving away from exclusively poetry, but never far from the poets it seems:

• PraiseSong for TheLand by Kofi Anyidoho (which comes with a cd of Anyidoho reading)
• In the House of Words by Tanure Ojaide
• Niyi Osundare's The State Visit and Two Plays
• The Invention & The Detainee by Wole Soyinka (his earliest play and a radio play)
• and the Kenyan journal Kwani?, number 3

Ah, now it will take me awhile to plow through all of these, but I shall. And I'll report back as well. And with these in hand it will have been a good conference indeed. For the acquisitive-minded, which I am when it comes to books.

I will, however, express yet again a degree of surprise at how few poetry panels there are. A closer examination of the program turns over a few more papers that explicitly took up poetry, but there is, to my mind, a surprising lack -- though it is a lack that Tanure Ojaide alluded to (albeit not without being taken somewhat to task, both rightly and wrongly, considering this program) in the earlier writers' roundtable I attended.

Nothing to do, I suppose, but to continue to fight the good fight and sing from the rooftops.

blogging the ala: new copperfield author reading

A short trek from the dorm to a small local bookshop -- New Copperfield's Book Service -- on Macomb's courthouse square (in the beginnings of slight spring thunderstorm). A slight delay as the waters, audience, and authors gather...

4:32 pm -- Well, it's a bit more than a slight storm...

4:38 pm -- Tanure Ojaide begins. His focus in recent years has been on the environment and ecology of the Niger Delta. Also trying to make his poetry more accessible (though without specifying the inaccessibility he's writing against).

4:42 pm -- Up on his feet; we stay seated. Call and response: "Come and see" / "American wonder".

4:44 pm -- And one from The Tale of the Harmattan with more attention to form... "Remembering" in couplets.

4:48 pm -- Veronique Tadjo is up next, juggling fiction and poetry. From Cote d'Ivoire but now in South Africa. Reading from Blind Kingdom - her newly translated novel. There's an otherworldly, mythical striving in the piece (Tadjo noted it as "apocalyptic") that feels like later Armah, and is ultimately untethered. And leaves me... well, just leaves me.

4:58 pm -- And Niyi Osundare returns. Teacher, poet (though no clear distinction for him between performer and audience). And up on his feet with a song for all.

5:06 pm -- Such a poet, such a performer: "people are my clothes". His whole body; he wraps the clothes around him, one hand holding the book, the other wrapping and sweeping and wagging a finger at all. And his voice bounces up and down and hits percussive note, and picks up a bit of song, and then back to "just" reading.

5:10 pm -- "Our Earth Will Not Die" from The Eye of the Earth. There is, Osundare says, a stubbornly optimistic note to it -- which is not a bad way of characterizing much of his verse. Which is also one of the reasons I feel his poetry to be so powerful. Which is saying something for a cynic like myself.

5:14 pm -- Back to prose with Sefi Atta.

5:20 pm -- And so the reading ends...

blogging the ala: writers' roundtable on contemporary african poetry

2:05 pm -- Well, not surprising as these things go, late starting and some confusion with the room (as the schedule stands we are sharing with another panel). Ah, but it's the ALA... And slowly the poets trickle in Tanure Ojaide, Chimalum Nwankwo, Abenia Busia, Naana Banyiwa Horne...

2:12 pm -- Niyi Osudare shows up. A long time since I've seen him and I'm thrilled to see he's hee and will be participating: he always puts on a tremendous performance.

2:18 pm -- Introductions and Ojaide reflecting on the strength of poetry; he contends, and I don't think incorrectly (look at the ALA schedule), that poets aren't taken as seriously as they once were (especially as compared to the way fiction is received).

2:22 pm -- Busia sees the 60s (evoked by Ojaide implicitly as a golden age) as something different, not the least because the poets embraced "the revolution" and also looks at the rise of performance poetry in the US. As far as the reception of poetry in Africa she's drawing out what she sees as a necessary distinction between poetry written in English and the performance of poetry in ones mother tongue. Ah, the "language question" again...

2:30 pm -- A wonderful reading, a marvelous voice and cadence, but I lost the thread of the line in Busia's reading.

2:35 pm -- For Horne, poetry is, at one in the same time, an essentially personal endeavor albeit one that is left to "the community" to judge how well it works and reflects her identities: "I am an academic and I am a Ghanaian."

2:40 pm -- Horne played around with dirges but "songs of abuse are more in tune with my personality."

2:43 pm -- At independence everyone wanted to read everything, or so Chimalum Nwankwo contends to explain the current state (or rather, interestingly to me, to explain another time -- definition by contrast); as well as the need for a special interest and education to engage and enjoy poetry.

2:50 pm -- There is just so clearly poetry that's meant to be read and poetry that is meant to be read aloud. But what the hell makes for either?

2:51 pm -- Ojaide again, and here it's the role that theory in the 80s and 90s played in shaping the field, and the notion that fiction is more "receptive" (or is it "productive") to theory.

2:55 pm -- I have never been gripped by Ojaide's poetry (not that I've read as thoroughly as I would wish), but I've never been swept away; which has always been disappointing (or is it confusing?) because I have always enjoyed his readings.

3:00 pm -- Poetry remains the most widely practiced genres, at least in Nigeria according to Osundare; part one of the contradiction in the enterprise. There is something romantic about the writing of poetry. In Africa people want to be poets. So why are the published books not sold?

3:03 pm -- "There are songs everywhere." And the traditional world does not need to worry about books of poetry not selling. There is something about the written form that puts off the public. And further, Osundare asserts, "If poetry is not selling, we should look at the way we practice our trade."

3:10 pm -- The arrogance of poets and the weakness of foundations. It all feeds into the current state of poetry. The dislocation of removal from ones community and, frankly, the need for fearlessness in approaching poetry, however it comes to you. And on and on as Osundare spins himself out and through the stuff of poetry, and into a selection from The Word Is An Egg.

3:16 pm -- Gabeba Baderoon from South Africa. Not on the program and unknown to me (though that's no shock, unfortunately). Ah, but I found this.

3:22 pm -- The only people who have ever asked Kofi Anyidoho to explain any of the lines in his poems (and he's put his Ewe poetry on cd) are his colleagues with PhDs. Which is a wicked little line itself...

3:28 pm -- Anyidoho muses that we must find other ways of putting our poetry across. And I offer this in all earnestness: what about a line or two, or a stanza -- a snippet of a performance -- as a ringtone? Can you imagine that thing going off at a busstop, in Anyidoho's deep, echoing tones?

3:38 pm -- And so it ends and moves into the audience discussion...

an experiment in "new media"?

Well, I'm here at the annual conference of the African Literature Association and it occurred to me that this is an excellent opportunity to report on the place of poetry in this little slice of the academic field.

There is, on initial (and admittedly cursory) review of the program, stunningly little poetry. Certainly few panels devoted exclusively to poetry. Poets are, of course, rife at the conference itself; and there are opportunities to both present and read (or perform). But there are few showcases of poetry.

Still, later this afternoon, Thursday, there is a roundtable on contemporary poetry, and on Friday there is reading at one of the local bookstores. I will be blogging on both programs as they run.

As an experiment. On a lark.

There is also a panel of poets and dramatists on offer Sunday morning -- but I will have left Macomb by then, so anyone who wants to send their thoughts on that panel (or any panel or performance or poet at the conference) is, of course, both welcome and invited to!