Silent Voices

Foreword

vi Foreword Ekpe Inyang, a well known environmentalist and dramatist, is an emerging voice in the poetic scene in Cameroon. As is the common experience with artists, his immediate environment serves as a reservoir of raw materials for his poems. These materials are blended with a subtle interplay of his culture and tradition, his likes and dislikes, as well as his priorities, which helps in painting a vivid picture of his concept of reality and social fabric. Art, both in its productive and receptive modes, is a continuous process of self transcendence which Ekpe exhibits in most of his poems. His poetic messages are well encapsulated in a silent articulation of certainties and joys, fears and doubts, as well as anxieties. But not all his poems end in silent tantrums. There are some that are a clarion call for battle, a summon to positive change. This is one of Ekpe’s major poetic posturing, an attribute of revolutionary art, the art of indictment of an oppressive status quo and of an incitement to its overthrow. There is a perennial source of worry in the works of many poets in Cameroon, from which Ekpe has tactfully exonerated himself. This he has achieved through a number of interrelated factors, such as the degree of his originality or stylistic virtuosity, the socio-cultural ambience of his operation, his historical imperatives, his view of the role of art in society and, above all, the nature of his social vision. Naturally, art thrives on the urge to share and to make known the unknown. This is the major reason why a crisis of communication arises when a poet’s frame of reference fails to correspond with that of his audience. Ekpe’s anthology is not merely a ‘rememberer’ of issues but serves more as a reminder of events that need urgent attention. What he drops as a mere hint to his audience, empowered by a shared experience in a community with a common history, a common culture, and a shared present, can be amplified to unthinkable proportions and reverberate into the next generations. Without these, poetry, for instance, would have fallen short of its essence. Good poetry is that which touches that archetypical chord which throbs down the roots of the audience. vii As a poet, Ekpe has employed different styles in his poems, but one style stands out very predominantly, namely that which seeks to inform, educate, and entertain. This corroborates Achebe’s famous article “The novelist (artist) as a teacher (1975). The poet has made use of a litany of literary devices, as a way of conveying his messages. His use of metaphor is very sweeping; he also employs anecdotes, satires, snares, hyperbole, paradox, etc, which he boldly foregrounds either using the captivating hint of Vangoh or the hyperbolic flamboyance of Picasso. Though some of his poems are jargon-riddled and archaism-suffused, such as the use of okokobiokoic, it merely reveals his attempt at extricating himself of the eurocentric exuberance of which many African poets have fallen victim. Freedom is not only fought under the banner of politics and human rights, as is the mainstream thinking today; the Arts too can fight! Even more vigorously than can be anticipated. Ekpe’s work is a sword out of its sheath ready for battle, not to destroy but to rebuild that which has been destroyed. Otu George Ekpe, November ...