Iba Ndiaye Diadji, a Senegalese professor of aesthetics, sees water as intrinsic to African ontology. He also argues that water is the most important substance to inspire African artists. (Diadji 2003: 273–275.) Water certainly has a significant role in Swahili poetry, written traditionally by people living on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Swahili poems have used aquatic imagery in expressing different ideas and sensations, in different contexts and times. Water imagery can be found in hundreds of years old Islamic hymns as well as in political poetry written during the colonial German East Africa. This article discusses water imagery in traditional Islamic Swahili poetry.

Iba Ndiaye Diadji, a Senegalese professor of aesthetics, sees water as intrinsic to African ontology. He also argues that water is the most important substance to inspire African artists. (Diadji 2003: 273–275.) Water certainly has a significant role in Swahili poetry, written traditionally by people living on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Swahili poems have used aquatic imagery in expressing different ideas and sensations, in different contexts and times. Water imagery can be found in hundreds of years old Islamic hymns as well as in political poetry written during the colonial German East Africa. This article discusses water imagery in traditional Islamic Swahili poetry.

Makala haya yanachanganua jinsi dhana za kifalsafa zinavyoakisiwa katika ushairi wa Kiswahili yakizingatia hasa tenzi zilizoandikwa kuhusu historia za dola za Kiafrika baada ya kupatikana kwa Uhuru. Tenzi nyingi za kundi hili zilitungwa Tanzania wakati wa ujamaa, ndiyo maana itikadi zinazoelezwa zaidi katika tenzi hizi zinahusiana na falsafa ya ujamaa. Uelekeo huu unaonyeshwa katika uchambuzi wa Utenzi wa Pambazuko la Afrika uliotungwa na Mohammed Seif Khatib na kuchapishwa mwaka 1982, ambao unaakisi falsafa ya ujamaa, itikadi za umoja wa Afrika (Panafricanism) na upingani wa ukoloni, ukigusana pia na imani ya Afrika kuwa chanzo cha mawazo mengi ya kifalsafa (Afrocentrism). Kwa namna hii, inaonekana kwa uwazi kwamba utungaji wa tenzi ni njia muhimu sana ya kueleza falsafa ya kisiasa na ya kihistoria katika utamaduni wa Kiswahili. Njia hii inalingana na njia nyinginezo: mawazo hayohayo yanaelezwa vilevile katika vitabu vya kitaaluma (kwa mfano, vitabu vya Mwalimu Nyerere kuhusu ujamaa), katika riwaya, au katika ushairi wa aina nyingine (kama vile mashairi, ngonjera, n.k.). Tenzi nyingine za hili kundi la ‘tenzi za Uhuru’ zinaakisi vilevile falsafa za aina nyingine, ikiwemo falsafa ya kidini inayotokana na dini ya Uislamu au falsafa ya ‘utu’, ambayo ina mizizi mirefu sana katika tamaduni nyingi za Afrika. Kwa kumaliza, makala yanasisitiza kwamba, tukipenda kufahamu ‘falsafa ya Kiafrika’ ni nini, ni lazima tutazame njia zilizoko na vyombo vilivyoko katika tamaduni za Kiafrika vya kuelezea dhana na thamani, bila ya kutarajia kwamba njia hizo na vyombo hivyo vitakuwa vilevile au vitafanana kimsingi na vyombo vya kawaida vya kuelezea falsafa katika tamaduni za Magharibi (yaani maandishi ya kitaaluma kuhusu falsafa). Ushairi ni njia mojawapo, tena muhimu sana, ya kueleza mawazo ya kifalsafa katika utamaduni wa Kiswahili, lakini ziko na njia nyingine, kama vile maelezo ya taaluma mbalimbali na tanzu nyingi za fasihi na sanaa, ambazo inafaa zitambulikane na ichambuliwe katika fani ya falsafa.

Contemporary Swahili poetry is developing according to three main trends. The followers of the first trend - the so called "traditionalists" - stick to classic forms of old Swahili poetry. Following the Swahili canon of versification, traditionalists continue to be within the limits of two main genres of old Swahili literature - tendi (long poems) and mashairi (moderate lyrics and philosophical verses). In Swahili poetry foregoing sudden changes were marked by the appearance of a group of young authors on the poetic stage in the 1970s, who gave a dare to tradition. Their venture radically changed the character of Swahili literature, marking the appearance of the second trend of Swahili poetry, the \\\"new\\\" or \\\"modernistic\\\" poetry. But along with traditional and \\\"modernistic\\\" schools there exists a third trend of Swahili poetry - it is that sort of versification, which one may call \\\"transitional\\\". In general it looks lile pure \\\"modernism\\\", where at first sight one cannot see even the faintest resemblance with the traditional canon, but the more careful search makes it obvious that there is a true continuity between traditional and contemporary art. The best examples of such transformation are the poems of two prominent figures of contemporary Swahili poetry, the Tanzanians Theobald Mvungi and Said Ahmed Mohamed.

Review

In contrast to the \''classical Islamic tendi\'' where the action as well as the setting is commonly detached from the environmental context of the Swahili coast, the Liyongo poems show an abundance of detailed descriptions and enumerative reviews of material items crucial and characteristic of the particular East African shares of Swahili culture. Frequently reference is also made to the natural environment as plants and their fruits play a prominent role as requisits of both the Swahili natural and cultural setting. Apart from being exploited as central requisite and being referred to as material source in the poems, plants are also extensively used for similes. The Liyongo poems are full of culturally metaphors which are context-dependent and sometimes render the text rather obscure. Without denying that there is, of course, also contemporary poetry employing plants as subject matter or metaphors, in this article I focus on two thematically close poems which we vaguely have to classify as \"old\" while not being able to give exact dates. Although the article suggests to be a thematic view on Swahili poetry, it is primarily a text edition of two poems, the \"Song of the Mjemje\" and the \"Shairi la Mtambuu\", which are both presented together with a critical apparatus.

Some time ago I came across a tiny collection of poems called Chungu tamu by Theobald Mvungi. The author was born in Mwanga province (Kilimanjaro) probably in the Fifties, as he graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1975 and gained his M.Ed. degree in Nigeria (Ibadan) in 1978. He published his first collection of poems, Raha karaha, in 1982 and his third one, Mashairiya Chekacheka, in 1995. All Mwangi`s poems deal with social problems, but only those of the second collection are formally innovative. Five of the twenty poems of this collection tell a story and I am going to investigate three of them. It is striking and quite unusual in Swahili poetry to present the narration itself as another story. However, it is not the first time that it occurs in modern Swahili poetry. In fact, for instance Kezilahabi´s poem Hadithiya kitoto (from the collection Kichomi, 1974) opens with the scene of the narrator - the grandfather - sitting close to a fire with his grandchildren who want to be told a story, while roasting birds and potatoes. The last two strophes contain grandfather´s comment, i.e. a moral message. Thus the narrative act itself is represented, as it often happens in prose fiction. But whereas in Kezilahabi it only opens or frames the main story, in Mvungi the narrator´s interferences are intermingled with the main story to such an extent that in fact two parallel stories are narrated. I will call them the frame story and the main story.

This article is based upon the following concept: Poetry is a chain of representation of the sub-conscience that is the creative source. We can read the poetic text in many ways, but if we imagine the text as the stage of images, we can understand the fundamental abstraction of the conscience. In this sense, oneiric images in some of Euphrase Kezilahabi’s poems will be analysed by using insights from psychoanalytic theory.

Haji Gora Haji (1933) is a Swahili poet from Tumbatu. Some people in Zanzibar call him `The Old Hurricane´ after the title and the first poem of his anthology Kimbunga (1994 Dar es Salaam: Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili) that made him well-known all over Taniania. While making a living from the sea, as a fisherman, porter in the harbour, sailor and transporter of cloves, he has been composing, since 1955, a large amount of ngoma and taarab songs, riddles, tenzi and mashairi, short stories and, recently, a short novel. This paper discusses metaphors and images that are characteristic of Haji Gora`s work, the way in which they reveal his identity and how they have been put in terms of contradictions and oppositions.

Different labels have been used for marking the reciprocity in Swahili dialogue poetry, varying between the more neutral `malumbano´ or `kujibizana´ and the more marked `ukinzani´ or `mashindano´. By showing a sample from the Zanzibari newspaper Mwongozi (1956) of a poetic dialogue on wife-husband relationships, the paper argues that the poetical form and the strong language used are not a mere expression of what has been called `rivalry´, but instruments in expressing views and opinions that have been observed in other literary devices (mithali, misemo, vijembe) and their usage. At the same time it is demonstrated that different types of poems (tenzi, mashairi, nyimbo) and different styles (plain, metaphoric, riddle) are used side by side. The ambiguity, incompleteness and strength of the language that is used in this poetry, make it all possible to express views on sensitive issues in the society.