Sierra Leone Poetry: Its Appearance and Characteristics as It Struggled to Take Form

Sierra Leonean poetry began in the late 19th century with poems published in English and the lingua franca, Krio in Sierra Leone Weekly Newsamong the first newspapers to be established in the colony in 1860. The most famous of all Sierra Leonean newspapers (which were of high quality) in the late 19th and 20th centuries, it was founded in September 1884 by Rev. JC May with the help of Dr EW Blyden and edited by JC May’s brother Cornelius who later became Mayor of Freetown in the 1920s.

Sometimes settlers, mostly Europeans, who had immigrated to the country wrote poems. Krio’s first poems appeared in the Saturday April 21, 1881 edition of The Sierra Leone Weekly News. Others appeared in the June 23, 1888 and July 1907 edition. Although most of the poems were written by people who they were not from Sierra Leone, they served as a source of inspiration. to the educated Sierra Leoneans who became so eager to prove that they were just as competent poets as their European counterparts. Poems were usually written in regular patterns of captions, lines, and rhyme schemes, as was then fashionable. Consequently, there was an increase in the publication of poems in newspapers, a practice that continued for quite some time, according to Leo Spitzer. Sierra Leonean Creoles who contains a whole range of such poems.

Next came Gladys Casely-Hayford and Thomas Decker, who were writing poems in Krio. Gladys Casely-Hayford’s first published selection of poems was titled in Krio take it like this (1948). In 1948, Thomas Decker published three of Krio’s poems. They were ‘Plasas’, ‘Yesterday, Tiday in Tumara’, ‘Slip Gud’.

But these first publications of poems in Krio in Sierra Leone Weekly News it had a restraining and constricting effect on the balanced development of Sierra Leonean poetry. Because it helped to confine Sierra Leonean poetry to the western area. Therefore, parts of the country were left concerned with oral poetry, as there was no written literature available there at the time.

There has always been a direct relationship between the development of written literature and education. Education in Sierra Leone was mainly concentrated in that early colonial period in the western area. It was only later that some schools were built in the provinces. But despite this, education was not as widely received by provincials, as many did not send their children to school early. It was only in 1906 that the first secondary school was established in the provinces.

The advantage that the Western Area had in education and the lukewarm attitude of the people in the other areas towards education led to most of the well-known poets coming primarily from the Western Area. This also resulted in the poets being a manly Krio who largely failed to penetrate and exploit the country’s rich cultural traditions and customs that they largely ignored. As a result, his works were characterized by the absence of myths, legends and traditional lore, unlike the case of other West African writers writing at the time, especially the Nigerians Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka and JP Clark, who made much use of that oral knowledge. Christopher Okigbo, for his part, often used the myth of the water maiden in his poems, while both Wole Soyinka and JPClark used in common the myth of Abiku, among others.

The poetry of the pioneer poets of Sierra Leone was infused instead of traditional and cultural materials with Christian religious doctrines and principles and moral topics. Little of the emerging Krio culture was passed down through them. But they also wrote about burning social issues of the day.

But in a poem like ‘Joseph’s Betrothal’, Gladys Casely-Hayford transposes Krio’s traditional ‘putting-stopping’ ceremony to the Jewish situation of Joseph and Mary, the earthly parents of Jesus. In ‘Nativity’, the baby Jesus is wrapped in ‘blue limpet’ and placed in ‘home-tanned doorskin’, instead of swaddling clothes and a manger. Later poets made use of some cultural material. Lemuel Johnson in ‘Prodigal’s Canticle’ introduces ‘Awujoh’ and ‘KuOmojade’, two traditional Krio ceremonies.

The subsequent spread of education accompanied by missionary activities in almost all parts of the country promoted the spread of literature which led to the breaking of the previous monopoly that the Western Area had on the production of poetry. As a result, there has been a considerable increase in the volume of poetry written in the country over the last four decades. The impetus for this was given by the efforts at Fourah Bay College, Njala University College, Milton Margai Teachers College in promoting and organizing literary events such as creative writing, poetry reading, among others. These efforts were supplemented by those of the writers’ association, the Fourah Bay College bookstore, and various campus newsletters and magazines.

Therefore, it could be said that most of Sierra Leone’s poetry was written in the 20th century. But the poetry of this period departed markedly from the earlier forms of poetry being produced, especially in its style and, to some extent, in its subject matter. The pioneering poets had stuck to the conventional forms of poetry using regular line lengths and rhyme schemes. Their simplistic poetry generally expressed vapid sentiments and strong religious Christian doctrines, and most of the poets were avid churchmen heavily influenced by 19th-century English poets and by the Bible, prayer books, and common hymns. One of them, Crispin George, was a longtime chorus girl. That they lived in a turbulent period of much political clamor for nationalism and self-determination and other destabilizing social and political movements is not too evident in their poetry, except for the subtle use of Christian doctrines to hide their aspirations for social justice. This is very true of the poetry of Crispin George and Jacob Stanley Davies and, to a lesser extent, Gladys Casely-Hayford.

Modern poets, contemporaries of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Christopher Okigbo, who while at university abroad, mainly in Britain, were exposed to modern English poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, and DH Lawrence began to break with the previous poetic tradition through the modern influence of his style. They also began to infuse some African customs and traditions into their poetry as they felt distanced and separated from their roots. Therefore, they abandoned the old methods of writing in regular lines and rhymes for free verse, distortion of logical syntax, darkness and personal symbolism and imagery. They critically examined hitherto easily accepted British and American values ​​and standards. They questioned racism and other social ills as they were exposed to racial discrimination and its degrading consequences in their foreign home.

Abioseh Nicol’s poetry, for example, encompasses the younger, pioneering modern poets who show some African consciousness and do not blindly accept foreign values ​​longing for the eventual return home to Sweet Sierra Leone.

Most of Gaston Bart-William’s poetry deals with racism and racial discrimination. Jacob Stanley Davies, although a pioneering poet expressing Christian doctrines in his poetry, has some poems like ‘Libretone’ that seem to speak to timeless themes. Crispin George in ‘Help Deferred’ breaks free from the restrictive effect of the rhyme scheme.

Since then, there has been a lot of development to change the profile of Sierra Leonean poetry, although opportunities for print publication are not as welcoming as then. But such a changing profile will make for an interesting study.