Poetry
Karingana ua karingana
Not translated into English
José Craveirinha · 1974
Synopsis
The book opens with a poem bearing the formula of the Ronga storytellers, the equivalent of “once upon a time”: the poet says that this way of telling the affairs of his people, simple as prophecies, is what makes him feel like a man. A second version of the title poem shows the seed slowly growing in the dark earth, then the gathering that keeps vigil around the fire and answers the storyteller's call. In “I want to be a drum”, the poet asks to be neither river, nor flower, nor assegai, nor even poetry, only the drum that breaks the bitter silence of Mafalala.
Context
The second book by its author, after a first collection published in Lisbon in 1964 and immediately seized by the regime's police, the collection was published in Lourenço Marques in 1974 by the Académica press, in the climate of decolonisation, then reissued in Maputo in 1982 by the Instituto Nacional do Livro e do Disco. Its title takes up the formula with which the Ronga begin a traditional tale; the listeners answer it with “karingana!”.
Who it is for
Poems in Portuguese, sprinkled with words from local languages, with no French translation. Mafalala, named in a poem of the collection, was a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Lourenço Marques.
Prizes and reception
Critics read in it a return to the forms of the oral tale, carried by a collective voice, that of a people under colonial domination.
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