Can you help my poetry investigation?

I am never happier than when I get to be an unfettered Poetry Detective, combing the internet and prodding every contact I have for leads and evidence of writing I don’t know about yet. My latest assignment is to find poets and writers from the African members of the Commonwealth to bring to Cove Park as part of a group of residencies that will link to the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

There are 20 African countries in the Commonwealth, from the rich to the poor, from the massive and populous to the small. My focus is the smaller nations and newer additions: Namibia, Zambia and Rwanda. Searching for writers from these countries leads tangentially via excited mouse clicking to the wealth of writing coming out of South Africa and Nigeria, the Swahili poetry from Tanzania; poetry in Portuguese from Mozambique.  I get a bit giddy at this point, I begin to catch the faintest scent of the range, diversity and excitement of contemporary writing in this vast continent. Until now Africa has been largely neglected in literature projects and exchanges with the UK in favour of China, the Middle East and latterly India.

I come across a book mentioned widely when enquiring about Zambia on the internet: Under African Skies: Poetry From Zambia. It sounds like just what I am after but it is out of print everywhere in the world by the looks of it (anyone got a copy they could lend me?). I stumble upon writers featured in it who have gone on to great things including Mandla Langa who features in the Bush Theatre’s 66 Books this year and who describes himself as a poet who has evolved into a novelist. Elsewhere I come across a poet and academic who has challenged his very language itself by his use of Swahili in a new context (Euphrase Kezilabi) and another Hagi Gora Hagi, described as a ‘a word artist in the true Swahili tradition’.

This last puts me in mind of another major residency I am thinking about: a residency for a poet writing in Scots around which we can build events and gatherings to explore further the rich heritage of the Scots ballad and Scottish storytelling, and the powerful music that Scots poetry has when it wrests itself from the page. Because what I am always seeking with my projects is synchronicity: the unintended echo that sometimes occurs between one artist and another, that can go on to broaden artistic understanding. Especially mine, little, striving thing that it is.

Namibia, Zambia, Rwanda. I can see my search has barely started. But what a thrilling search it is.

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