Poetry
Fleurs de latérite
Not translated into English
François Sengat-Kuo · 1954
Synopsis
Thirteen poems of anger and frustration, marked by négritude, which their author, a student in Paris, first published under an assumed name. The title evokes the red earth of the tropics and the dust of the roads, and the collection reads like a bouquet of dreams, frustrations and nostalgia. Reissued in 1971, it is followed by a second sequence, Heures rouges, which returns to the Douala riots of September 1945, a childhood memory exorcised and a sign of the struggle that is beginning.
Context
The collection appeared in 1954 under a pseudonym, when its author was still a student. The Éditions CLE of Yaoundé reissued it in 1971 under his real name, in 54 pages, with Heures rouges, and it is in this edition that the poem “Ils sont venus” appears. The 2004 Africultures article sees in it the work of a poet shaped by négritude, asking whether this stance left him enough critical distance. In 1970 the author brought out with Présence africaine a more lyrical collection, in which the poem of 1 January 1960 hails independence.
Who it is for
In French, a slim collection. It helps to know that riots bloodied Douala in September 1945.
Prizes and reception
No known prize. René Philombe regarded its author as the first theorist of neo-Cameroonian poetry.