African Poetry in English - Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering prominent English- and French-speaking African poets, key works, literary styles, and historical developments outlined in O. R. Dathorne's presentation.

H.I.E. Dhlomo

South African poet who published Valley of a Thousand Hills in 1941, drawing from Zulu vernacular verse (such as B. W. Vilakazi) to introduce protest, addressing good, evil, autocracy, and victimization.

Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe

Ghanaian poet (died 1953) whose works include Between the Forest and the Sea (1950) and Deep Down the Black Man's Mind (1954), utilizing race to highlight emotional discord and rhythm.

Dennis Osadebay

Nigerian poet who translated poems from Ibo and used public attitudes to voice calls to African youth, praise of the Black race, and the conflicts between the oppressed and oppressor.

Gladys Casely-Hayford

Sierra Leonean writer who established Krio as a serious written language, employing conventional metrical arrangements and rhymed quatrains.

Krio

An English-based Creole language of Sierra Leone developed into a serious literary medium capable of rendering English verse translations.

Thomas Decker

Chief poet of Krio from Sierra Leone who translated Shakespeare and the Bible into Krio to demonstrate its lyrical qualities and verse capabilities.

Crispin George

Sierra Leonean poet and author of Precious Gems Unearthed by an African (1952), whose verse exclusively expressed Christian views and used folktales for moral instruction.

Roland T. Dempster

Liberian poet whose works, such as Anniversary Ode (1959), served as panegyrics to President Tubman and the national political party.

Michael Dei-Anang

Ghanaian poet who published five volumes of poetry between 1946 and 1965, using jagged broken lines to critically re-evaluate words like backward, forward, and superstition.

Efua Sutherland

Ghanaian writer noted by Mphahlele as highly individualistic, whose poetry moved away from purely nationalistic sentiment to present early glimpses of individual nature perception.

Gabriel Okara

Contemporary Nigerian poet born in 1921 who connected generations by advocating literal translation of African native language ideas and expressing a private territory of anguish.

Frank Parkes

Ghanaian poet whose verse exhibits disenchantment with nature, religion, and the corrupt present through short, irregular, interrupted lines.

Christopher Okigbo

Nigerian poet who transmuted all experience into ritual and ceremony, seeking ultimate wisdom through a distinctive private voice across interconnected poetic works.

Michael Echeruo and Pol Ndu

Eastern Nigerian poets whose work portrays everyday human experience and dramatizes the inner predicament of a persona torn between ritual conformity and ideal aspirations.

Okogbule Glory Nwanodi (Okogbule Wanodi)

Nigerian author of Icheke (1964) who adopted the posture of a wise old pagan defending traditional cultural values against inevitable collapse.

Icheke

A 1964 poetry book title by Okogbule Wanodi; the term translates to parrot and signifies a wise old man as well as a poet.

George Awoonor-Williams (Kofi Awoonor)

Ghanaian poet who incorporated oral vernacular imagery and local oral traditions into his verse to convey the feeling of loss experienced by the educated generation.

Wole Soyinka

Nigerian satirist and poet, author of Telephone Conversation and The Immigrant, whose confident verse focuses on private experience and domesticating indigenous gods.

J. P. Clark

Nigerian writer described as a versifier focused on metrical technicalities, fragmentary descriptive poems, folk belief, and historical doom.

Lenrie Peters

Gambian poet whose European exposures broadened his range of ideas, creating complete poetic vignettes that live through their own experience.

Chinua Achebe

Renowned Nigerian novelist who published his first poetry volume, Beware Soul Brother and Other Poems (1971), following the Biafran War.

Kwesi Brew

Ghanaian traditionalist poet whose work centers on community beliefs, traditional praise songs, and masquerade verse genres.

Albert Kayper-Mensah

Ghanaian poet and author of The Dark Wanderer (1970) who explores paradoxes through recurring imagery of day, night, light, dark, life, and death.

John Otukwei Okai

Ghanaian poet, author of Flowerfall (1969), who integrated African and European imagery and explored themes of sexual pleasure combined with water imagery.

Joseph Buruga

East African author of The Abandoned Hut (1969), which utilizes dramatic monologue, folktales, proverbs, and dirges to critique westernized values.

Taban Lo Liyong

East African poet whose collection Franz Fanon's Uneven Ribs (1971) uses bitter vignettes, self-directed humor, and oral repetitive devices to express new concepts.

Okello Oculi

Ugandan writer whose 1968 work Orphan uses a kinless child sitting at village crossroads as a symbol for Africa's detachment from its heritage to critique western institutions.

Okot p'Bitek

East African writer whose works (Lak Tar, Song of Ocol, Song of a Prisoner) berate group behavior to expose anti-westernization traditionalist sentiments.

Dennis Brutus

South African activist poet, SANROC president, and author of A Simple Lust whose poetry utilizes haunting laments and jagged lines to protest apartheid.

SANROC

The South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee, headed by Dennis Brutus, which succeeded in excluding South Africa from the Olympic Games.

Keorapetse Kgositsile

South African poet (Spirits Unchained, My Name is Afrika) whose style blends Pan-Africanism with Black American liberation movements.

Raymond Mazisi Kunene

South African traditional and protest poet who composed in Zulu before publishing English translations in Zulu Poems (1970).