Related Research Articles
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered a founder of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted.
Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Edwin DuBose Heyward was an American author best known for his 1925 novel Porgy. He and his wife Dorothy, a playwright, adapted it as a 1927 play of the same name. The couple worked with composer George Gershwin to adapt the work as the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. It was later adapted as a 1959 film of the same name.
The Honourable Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB, was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
Earliest accounts of this literature date back to 1668 when a Spanish Jesuit by the name of Fr. Francisco Ignacio Alzina documented the poetic forms such as the candu, haya, ambahan, canogon, bical, balac, siday and awit. He also described the susumaton and posong, early forms of narratives. Theater tradition was very much in place - in the performance of poetry, rituals, and mimetic dances. Dances mimed the joys and activities of the ancient Waray.
James Emanuel was a poet and scholar from Alliance, Nebraska. Emanuel, who is ranked by some critics as one of the best and most neglected poets of the 20th century, published more than 300 poems, 13 individual books, an influential anthology of African-American literature, an autobiography, and more. He is also credited with creating a new literary genre, jazz-and-blues haiku, often read with musical accompaniment.
Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American writer, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American causes, among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her works.
Jayne Cortez was an African-American poet, activist, small press publisher and spoken-word performance artist whose voice is celebrated for its political, surrealistic and dynamic innovations in lyricism and visceral sound. Her writing is part of the canon of the Black Arts Movement. She was married to jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman (1954–64), and their son is jazz drummer Denardo Coleman. In 1975 Cortez married painter, sculptor, and printmaker Melvin Edwards, and they lived in Dakar, Senegal, and New York City.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer, publisher and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project. He writes for children under the name K.P. Kojo.
Poetry as an oral art form likely predates written text. The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely related to musical traditions, and the earliest poetry exists in the form of hymns, and other types of song such as chants. As such poetry is a verbal art. Many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are recorded prayers, or stories about religious subject matter, but they also include historical accounts, instructions for everyday activities, love songs, and fiction. Many scholars, particularly those researching the Homeric tradition and the oral epics of the Balkans, suggest that early writing shows clear traces of older oral traditions, including the use of repeated phrases as building blocks in larger poetic units. A rhythmic and repetitious form would make a long story easier to remember and retell, before writing was available as a reminder. Thus many ancient works, from the Vedas to the Odyssey, appear to have been composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies. Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, runestones and stelae.
Efua Theodora Sutherland was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa (1962), Edufa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan. As the earliest Ghanaian playwright-director she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at the university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s.
Peter Rudolf Gisela Horn was a Czech-born South African poet. He made his mark especially with his anti-Apartheid poetry. At the end of World War II he had to flee from his home and settled with his parents first in Bavaria and later in Freiburg im Breisgau, where he completed high school in 1954. He then emigrated with his parents to South Africa.
Kofi Anyidoho is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana.
Cane is a 1923 novel by noted Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer. The novel is structured as a series of vignettes revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a result, the novel has been classified as a composite novel or as a short story cycle. Though some characters and situations recur between vignettes, the vignettes are mostly freestanding, tied to the other vignettes thematically and contextually more than through specific plot details.
Abu Ishaq ibn Ibrahim ibn Abu al-Fath (1058–1138/9), called Ibn Khafajah, a native of Alzira, was one of the most famous poets of al-Andalus during the reign of the Almoravids. He was born in 1058 in Alzira near Valencia where he spent most of his life. He was the maternal uncle of poet Ibn al-Zaqqaq.
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote the poem when he was seventeen and crossing the Mississippi River on the way to visit his father in Mexico. It was first published the following year in The Crisis, starting Hughes's literary career. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" uses rivers as a metaphor for Hughes's life and the broader African-American experience. It has been reprinted often and is considered one of Hughes's most famous and signature works.
Poet Loss Pequeño Glazier is the creator of books of print poetry, digital poems, theoretical texts, and performance works. Glazier stands among literary figures at the "forefront of the digital poetics movement. A "distinguished writer of electronic poetry as well as a critic", according to N. Katherine Hayles, he is author of Luna Lunera, Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm, Digital Poetics: the Making of E-Poetries, the first book-length study of digital poetry, and Small Press, as well as the major digital works, white faced bromeliads on 20 hectares, Io Sono at Swoons, and Territorio Libre (2003-2010). These three works are featured in his digital poetry performance film, Middle Orange | Media Naranja. His projects also include numerous poems, essays, film, visual art, sound, digital works, and projects for dance, music, installations, and performance. Glazier's poetic vision was the subject of an interview by David Jhave Johnston in 2012. His recent project, Luna Lunera: Poems al-Andalus is a ten-year project culminating in a collection of print poetry drawn from scores of digital, code, and performance iterations. Luna Lunera is co-presented on the Web as digital poems, solo readings and as dance performances.
William Du Bois Yaw Sakyi Kumi, popularly known as Koo Kumi, is a Ghanaian spoken word artist, photographer, slam poet and mixed media visual artist. He is known for his blend of Twi and English languages. He adopts a traditional sound as well as an alternative hip hop feel. He appeared on the literary scene in 2012.
References
- 1 2 Oyekan Owomoyela (2008). The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945. Columbia University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-231-51215-2.
- ↑ Hein Willemse, 'An Interview with Kobena Eyi Acquah', English in Africa, Vol. 14, No. 2 (October 1987)
- 1 2 Kofi Anyidoho (1992). "Poetry as Dramatic Performance: The Ghana Experience". In Gordon Collier (ed.). Us/them: Translation, Transcription and Identity in Post-colonial Literary Cultures. Rodopi. pp. 267–9. ISBN 90-5183-394-6.
- 1 2 Pietro Deandrea (2002). Fertile Crossings: Metamorphoses of Genre in Anglophone West African Literature. Rodopi. pp. 152–62. ISBN 90-420-1468-7.