Barfee, W.G.; P.T. Nkweteyim; E.E. Esambe. (2010). Songs for Tomorrow: Cameroon Poetry in English. Yaounde, Miraclaire Publishing. 204 pages. (Series editor; Oscar C. Labang).
Excerpt (From the Preface by Emmanuel Fru Doh)
Songs for Tomorrow, as an anthology of poems by Anglophone-Cameroonians, is a welcome effort at further burrowing not only into Anglophone-Cameroon Literature as a whole, but into a genre that is always treated, especially by young students, as anathema. This whole enterprise, therefore, amounts to an effort that reveals poetry as a subject that can be enjoyed, especially in its role as an effective medium for the dissemination of ideological trends which can be entertaining or didactic and thereby effectively broadening the worldview of society.
The writer, especially the poet in this case, is like the proverbial toad in Igbo weltanschauung popularized by Chinua Achebe, which does not venture out of its abode unless there is a good reason; so it is with Anglophone poets in Cameroon. For decades they have been writing, with their poems carrying a disturbing desperation and urgency even as they were taught Shakespeare, Sheldon, Chaucer and others, with the local poetry landscape officially reduced to terra incognita for different reasons ranging from colonial indoctrination to the unavailability of texts by local poets. Yet, as Songs for Tomorrow reveals, more than in any other genre, there is a huge supply of Anglophone-Cameroon poets whose voices would otherwise go unheard but for an effort of this kind.
From this venture then, it is true that Cameroon, as a nation, has a rich literary panorama, yet, regrettably, one must, from time to time, talk of Anglophone-Cameroon Literature in its own right instead of Cameroon literature as a whole. The reason is simple: it is a given that efforts to treat Cameroon’s literature as a single unit will fall through almost immediately because of the divisive nature of the nation’s history. In a nutshell, besides her African values, Cameroon is a cultural hybrid of the English and the French, a background engendered by the partitioning of Cameroon in 1916 after World War I and the handing over of the two emerging sections to Britain and France as protectorates theoretically speaking. The core of the matter that is relevant here is that when Cameroonians reunited some decades after, in 1961 to be precise, they could hardly be any further estranged from each other as the partitioned territories had been transformed into cultural microcosms, not to say caricatures, given the present administrative chaos that is the order of things in the country, of England and France. This colonial history, along with the terms on which independent Cameroon’s history is hinged, which climaxed with the nation’s repeated nomenclatorial transformation from The Federal Republic of Cameroon, through The United Republic of Cameroon, to today’s Republic of Cameroon, have all played a huge role in emerging with the somewhat conflicting cultural and literary climate today existing in the country. As witnessed to by their quality of life and literature until today, both factions remain estranged and, more often than not, opposed to each other despite the government’s hypocritical effort at downplaying the gravity of the situation.
Accordingly, Cameroon’s literature, especially as portrayed within the last two to three decades, is predominantly protest, but that from Anglophone-Cameroon, in particular, has been protest with a unique bent: it does not only decry the unpatriotic character of the governments that have [mis]governed Cameroon for reducing Cameroonians into paupers and in the extreme bandits, especially the government which came into office in 1982, it also focuses on what is today referred to as the “Anglophone problem” in Cameroon. This is the conviction that Anglophone-Cameroonians have been betrayed by their Francophone counterparts who have opted out of the federation they both agreed to come together and form in 1961, yet not only are they still clinging to Anglophone-Cameroon’s territory, even as they drain the resources of the latter, they continue attempting to treat Anglophone-Cameroonians as second class citizens, a re-colonized bunch under La République du Cameroun. This conflict between the two Cameroons, known during the federation as West and East Cameroon, along with many different thematic concerns, characterize the mood of Anglophone Literature, the genre notwithstanding, according it a unique flavor within Cameroon Literature as a whole; hence, one’s ability to talk of Anglophone-Cameroon’s Literature as a unique dimension in Cameroon literature. Its prime concern so far, is the inner crisis of Anglophone reality in an alienating country they consider their homeland.
The poems in this collection, consequently, speak the immortal language of confusion, betrayal, anger, hate, and despair, in relation to Cameroon and the world at large, yet there is room for true love, and
Songs For Tomorrow forgiveness. It is true that in an increasingly unstable nation and a world that seems to have lost its head, the works of writers, such as the poets here assembled, must engage in a most powerful manner the goals and ethos of the entire human race. These then are poems by poets who are desperate yet practically involved in an individual but equally collective effort to trigger positive change throughout their national territory and wherever the wailing voices of mankind suffering under the yoke of oppression, disillusionment, and despair can be heard. Consequently, these are poems shaped by the poets’ experiences and those of their societies as a whole. These poets mean their poems to reshape the cosmos, to shatter especially government sponsored illusions by making concrete the reality which has, until of recent, only been a mirage to the common man; hence, the socio-cultural nature of the contextual definition of this volume.
The editor’s decision then, to emerge with an anthology of Anglophone-Cameroon poems is certainly heartwarming and equally revealing of the spirit behind those wanting the public to get the message of numerous poetic voices that have, hitherto, been wailing in a socio-political wasteland peopled by a deprived lot of mankind who, ironically, are wading in material and spiritual abundance from which they barely benefit. This is the case because of warped policies conjured into place by lethargic regimes peopled by dwarfs in administration at best, or else by simply wicked and selfish people tormented by the lack of a vision, paraded in the guise of despotic absoluteness, that will benefit their fatherland as a whole.
Broadly categorized into nine different sections, the poems in this volume expand on the canon of Anglophone literary studies as their apprehensions, though deeply rooted in Cameroon in the main, tear beyond the national boundary spilling over into Africa as a whole, and the world at large. In the process, Songs for Tomorrow brings together emerging poets as well as established voices in the field who all articulate from the heart of their cultures the battered dreams of the oppressed and much more. These young and the established, some with international renown, together are creating a new literary spirit, a reawakening so to say, that before was almost completely stifled by technological challenges - and much else - in the publishing venture that no longer hold true as was the case even just twenty years ago. It is then a new day in this domain as not only are there many new poets coming up, but the same is the case with publishing houses determined to publish and make available local and equally more relevant poets and their works. This addition to a couple of already published anthologies that focus on Anglophone poetry in Cameroon is convenient in the sense that it makes available in one collection a rich body of poems through which the public can gain insight into Anglophone-Cameroon’s literary heritage. In this light, beyond Cameroon, this anthology is a significant contribution to the literary climate of Anglophone literatures of the world as a whole.
It must be realized, however, that this anthology does not contain all the Anglophone voices the editors would have loved to assemble. Even then, it is a remarkable and equally refreshing representation of emerging and established voices given the limits of time, and the available resources that moulded this venture; it is a poetry anthology with a rich variety of stylistic identities that assert equally different poetic visions. I am, in any case, positive, that this literary effort, a rich collection of thematic flavours served in equally rich and varied stylistic models emerging primarily from a repressed society will, through the questions it has raised, the observations it has made, and the national longings it has echoed, help Cameroonians in particular and the world at large, to discover the entertaining yet eye-opening power of art fired into existence by souls more often than not at war with themselves and their environment. For this reason mainly, I am proud to support this outcome as the enriching result of a rewarding collaboration of determined scholarly personages.
For those of us who were there decades ago and could only hear of but barely see or hold copies of our compatriots’ efforts because they could hardly find a publisher for “such a parochial market,” as some would say, or because they were only distributed overseas even when published, this anthology is a welcome change that corroborates the fact that the once apparently malnourished literary scene in Cameroon is changing fast. This volume amounts to a promise of a potential literary deluge about to drown not only Cameroon’s but the literary landscape of the world as a whole, Anglophone-Cameroon’s isms and schisms being the rain clouds that have gathered.
Emmanuel Fru Doh
Minnesota, 2010
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