Poetry
Rythmes et cadences
Not translated into English
Paul Akakpo Typamm · 1981
Synopsis
The volume brings together three sets, “Poèmes et contes d'Afrique”, first published in Paris in the nineteen-fifties, “Rythme et cadence” and “Mosaica”: poems and tales dominated by the celebration of the native land, in the heritage of négritude. The most frequently reprinted piece, “Je suis homme”, runs through the colours of skin, red, yellow, white and black, each with its own images, and closes every stanza on the same refrain, which brings all these colours back to a single name.
Context
The volume appeared in 1981 from Akpagnon, at Le Mée-sur-Seine, the house founded by Yves-Emmanuel Dogbé, who wrote its preface, and was reprinted in 1983. It brings together under a single title three sets of poems, the oldest of which the Bibliothèque nationale de France knows in a second edition published in Paris in 1958, by the Cercle de la poésie et de la peinture, in thirty-two pages: literary histories date the beginning of Togolese poetry in French from that year. Anas Atakora ranks the author among the precursors of a “néo-négritude”, before the revival of the eighties.
Who it is for
A volume of about one hundred and forty pages, in French, of regular construction and easy to approach; it mixes poems and tales, and is read in fragments.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the birth certificate of Togolese poetry; its author's best-known poem appears in collections intended for primary schools.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.