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Writers' Forum

Q: On the Language of the New Nigerian Poet

Let me move this chat further to ask in what language should the new Nigerian poet create? I think that this is a very important question in the sense that I believe it will help our critics in understanding what the poet is actually saying and how he says it. For me I believe that certain terms like similes, metres, did not really preoccupy the minds of the traditional poet -- in the sense that many of these new Nigerian poets tend to create in indigenous languages. Some few months ago, I had the opportunity to talk with two younger poets...they gave me the same reply � that they create in their indigenous languages. So you find that for these poets, the ideas first mature in indigenous concepts which they are familiar with, then they turn it into English or look about for English language equivalents for some of the things they already have....

Ce:
I look at the creative process as a communication that goes beyond language. I visualise an interaction that goes towards the inner dimensions of the individual. And that interaction is neither imagistic nor symbolic. The interaction transcends the boundaries of language. It is knowingness that goes so deep within the individual. The problem comes in lending expression to this knowingness; to this self instinctual understanding or realisation and then that problem comes when you want to give verbal expression to this experience within the individual. I believe that the verbal expression is limited in any language it chooses. It cannot give vent to very deep feelings, the depth of realisation that I am trying to make. But I am left with no other choice but to communicate through that language given to me, being the English language. And I make haste to state that even the best mind faced with this realisation discovers that the activity of expression through language is inadequate to communicate the profundity and intensity of experience. But that is speaking on the individual plane. There is no doubt that some poets ...could claim to think first in their indigenous languages. ...But where the individual is always confronted with translating, thinking in original language and expressing that original language into another language being the English gives us a large deviation; we go wide off the mark in understanding the creative process. The poetic expression for me essentially is an attempt to reach wider levels of meanings, wider spheres of understanding. The language the individual chooses to express it is entirely up to him but he must communicate in such a way, consciously, that he offers the reader, the audience, an ability to understand that experience.
 

From Literary Chat Forum: Critics of the New Poetry

See Also: The Poetry of Chin Ce