Christopher Okigbo dwells on the same theme in Heavensgate where his atonement
becomes vicarious as there is a sense in which it speaks for the pains of the severance of
the modern African from the otherwise authentic African culture as a result of the
purchase of colonialism on him in all its ramifications.^9 For Okigbo therefore, exile is
painfully spiritual as it is physical. The cultural implications of his inability to take up the
path charted for him by the dictates of tradition are not only regretted, they also go to
validate the Spanish etymological underpinning of exile as “los despistados” , that is, the
disoriented (Dolora Wojciehowski 1992: 1). Also from West Africa, Soyinka’s “The
Telephone Conversation” touches on the theme of exile, this time in the physical sense.
Similarly, in the poetry of Portuguese-speaking writers, the preoccupation with the
condition of the exilic among writers of this generation is remarkable; Antonio Jacinto’s
“Poem of Alienation” comes to mind here. With Okot p’Bitek, the issue assumes a grand
dimension of extended metaphors as one finds in Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol. In
both, there is a contextualization of the socio-cultural tensions of exile. There is however
a parallel twist to the notion of exile among poets of the first generation in South Africa,
as it is in the main an experience engendered by the aberrations of the politics of
apartheid. It is in fact for this reason that Udenta Udenta (1996: 123) asserts that during
this period, it was impossible to talk about South African poetry without discussing exile.
This trope is most represented by the poetry of Brutus.
In a similar vein, various critical works have been done on African poetry in general and
the concept of exile in particular. In the context of the first generation prominent among
such was Ken Goodwin’s Understanding African Poetry. The work consciously selects
poets of English expression in a manner that places it, even two decades after, as a critical
intervention not only intent on recognizing the accomplishment of the poets, but making
statements of canon formation at the same time. In understudying the impact of western
tradition on these poets the journey motif associated with modernity is also manifest. This
9
The personal experience of Okigbo in this case is instructive. Robert Fraser recounts it this way: “We
know from Anozie’s account that Okigbo wrote Heavensgate shortly after a brief return visit to his home
village of Ojoto, where he re-encountered the traditional mysteries and in particular the cult associated with
the riverine goddess Idoto. We learn further from Okigbo’s own testimony that as a young boy he was
expected to shoulder the burden of the priesthood of this cult when he grew up, but later found it
impossible to reconcile this with his professional career as librarian and publisher” West African Poetry
(Great Britain, Cambridge University Press, 1986), 106-107.