Episode #108: The Revolutionary Power of Black Poetry

Black Power Talks

In this episode, we showcase several African poets and talk about the role of poetry and culture in the African anti-colonial struggle.

We know that the spoken word is powerful. If not, colonizers would not have stripped Africans of their names, their language, their traditions and their songs.

The anticolonial writer from Martinique Aime Cesaire wrote extensively on the power of poetry, the spoken word and culture. In the important essay, “Poetry and Knowledge”, Cesaire argued that poetry was an anticolonial tool because it challenged the conventions of colonial society and allowed the oppressed to imagine new worlds.

In the essay, "Poetry is not a luxury," Audre Lorde wrote, “poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hope and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into tangible action. Poetry is the way we can help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”

There is not a time in the struggle for African liberation that we have not seen the power of spoken word, poetry and music as anticolonial cultural influencers.

Today we will speak with revolutionary culture workers including FoFeet Alkebulan. FoFeet is the Economic Development Coordinator and organizer with the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in St. Louis. As part of her organizing efforts, FoFeet organizes the Musa Abantu Poetry Nights for the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.

FoFeet is joined by Valerie VKween Young from St. Louis Missouri, Jheanelle Owens from Jamaica, and Dzidzor from Boston.

We also showcase the poetry of Claude McKay and Gil Scot Heron.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom, Dexter Mlimwengu and Solyana Bekele, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.