Poetry
A Song Out of Midnight
Roland T. Dempster · 1960
Synopsis
An occasional poem, written on 4 January 1960 for the inauguration of President Tubman and his vice-president Tolbert, and published as a souvenir of the ceremony. The nation is called there to emerge from the night, an image carried by the title and developed throughout the text. The country is a hundred and thirteen years old, the same man has governed it for sixteen, and his so-called policy of unification promises to bring the coast and the interior closer together.
Context
The text was written for a specific day, and it was made the libretto of a ceremony: it is a state commission as much as a poem, and its author then held the position of official voice of the country's letters; the subtitle of the volume presents it as a souvenir of the inauguration. The regime it celebrates lasted twenty-seven years and its policy of unification did not reduce the gap between the descendants of freed slaves and the peoples of the interior. From the same pen, the anthologies have mostly retained a plea for the continent, reprinted in 1970 in an American collection of Black poetry.
Who it is for
A short poem in English, patriotic in form. The context of the Tubman regime sheds light on its function more than on its form.
Prizes and reception
Its author is regarded as the first Liberian poet to have published a collection, and a literary prize in the country has borne his name.
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