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‘My Pet Bee’ (Poem)
- Ernest N. Emenyonu, Cajetan Iheka, Stephanie Newell
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- Book:
- ALT 38 Environmental Transformations
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 07 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 20 November 2020, pp 161-163
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- Chapter
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Summary
Waggling at rare hours of sunrise
Whirring at first sight of twilight
Glowing at whiff of unseen light
And yet no hive in sight
What bright briar
must have brought you to my littered lair?
I know not what love, I see no flower
No showers even at the usual hour
Only dead leaves dumped on this foyer
by thirsty stems. Bumblebee
drifting free
You left lush shrubs
for a dead courtyard littered with stubs.
I may have smelled green or nipped a forbidden flower
Away to the sanctuary for an early prayer
If I go
will you follow?
But oh, incessant bee flying free
pursued in speed to circle me
gliding closer, a hushed hover
You perch on my shoulder
I smile hands cupped
for a friendly hug or frustrated swipes
yet you spy
in multiple lenses of colourful eyes.
Golden insect, what do you inspect
if there is no honey to expect?
She sniffs my perfumed neck
a Calvin Klein has done the trick
But no, not my armpit
A daring wriggle closer, sniffing and oh, a spit
followed by a sting. You slap me!
Foul odour masked by choicest fragrance
Human delusion to elegance
No insect is fooled by this ruse
How will I be of use
in this subterfuge
to an honeybee?
What decay has she felt or see
in me?
So I rushed to pluck the finest flower
to deck my foyer
with fresh spray
Perhaps she will stay
and not stray.
She flew back secretly
surveyed and sniffed quietly
the old kitchen lingered in smoke
Beware, lest you choke.
Yet, no dismay
as she flew away.
A rotten food
must have fouled her mood
I am no lover, nor do I flower
in this dirty foyer.
A lone harbinger bee surveying courtyards
What message have you brought?
On whose land have I trespassed?
What shrub did I burn down?
What trees did I cut and which birds did I displace?
On whose house did I build mine?
I will clean this old land, plant fresh flowers
and leave room for new lovers.
How do we bring life to a dead cold farm,
light up old homes to let love blossom?
I’m still searching for answers
to lure back the pet bee
who wanted to hive with me.
Literary Totemism and its Relevance for Animal Advocacy: A Zoocritical Engagement with Kofi Anyidoho’s Literary Bees
- Ernest N. Emenyonu, Cajetan Iheka, Stephanie Newell
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- Book:
- ALT 38 Environmental Transformations
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 07 November 2020
- Print publication:
- 20 November 2020, pp 11-23
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- Chapter
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Summary
The recent ‘animal turn’ (Ritvo 2007, 121) in literary criticism has made an immediate impact in African literature, with the works of Wendy Woodward (2008) and Huggan and Tiffin (2010) drawing attention to ethical and ecological dimensions of representing animals in African texts. The representation of animals, Woodward argues, influences ‘the ways humans conceptualize and respond to “real”… animals’ (Woodward 14). African literature is replete with literary animals that are represented in diverse ways. For Kofi Anyidoho, a member of the ethnic Ewe people of Ghana whose culture includes animal totemism, literary representation of animals extends beyond literary tropes. His use of the honeybee as his alter ego reflects Ewe totemic practices. In this article, I locate Anyidoho's artistic strategy of articulating through the viewpoint of the honeybee within the theoretical context of animal totemism. I draw on Timothy Insoll's concept of totemism (2011) and animal-focused critical concepts from Kate Soper (2005), Wendy Woodward (2008), Huggan and Tiffin (2010) and Cajetan Iheka (2018) to discuss literary totemism in selected poems of Kofi Anyidoho and the relevance of this literary strategy for animal advocacy. I refer to poems from three volumes of poetry: A Harvest of Our Dreams (1984), Earthchild with Brain Surgery (1985) and Ancestral Logic and Carribbean Blues (1993). These three volumes are respectively rendered simply as Harvest, Earthchild and Blues in this article.
Kofi Anyidoho (1947–) is a renowned Ghanaian poet and literary scholar from the South-eastern AnloEwe town of Weta in Ghana. He is a cousin of another famous Ghanaian Ewe poet, Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor (1935– 2013). The Anlo Ewes boast a rich oral poetry history with many famous traditional poet cantors emerging from that region between the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial era (Awoonor 1974). Significantly, Kofi Anyidoho's mother – Abla Adidi – was a well-known traditional poet/singer whose art form evidently inspired her son (Awoonor 2002, 12). The transition of Ewe oral poetry into a modern literary form was championed by both Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor and Kofi Anyidoho.