SOURCE: Osuagwu, Ndubuisi C. “A Traditional Poet in Modern Garb: Okot p'Bitek.” Literary Criterion 23, nos. 1-2 (1988): 13-29.

[In the following essay, Osuagwu discusses the influence of traditional African literary forms on p'Bitek's poetry.]

A discussion of Okot p'Bitek as a traditional poet in modern garb calls for a definition of concepts. The concepts involved are the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’. For the purpose of this paper, traditional poetry refers to the poetry of the people in the African countryside. It could be written; it could be performed. When written, the form, theme, appeal, style, including language must be able to send spontaneous ripples of passion down the nervous system of the average countrysider.

On the other hand, the ‘modern’ refers to those experiences which have come as a result of urbanisation, colonialism, Western technology and education. It also includes the decadence which follows these factors.

A consideration of p'Bitek in the light of the topic of this paper will be better rewarded by considering, as a point of departure, the background and training which have influenced his art. A great singer and dancer after the Acholi types, his loyalty to the Acholi culture, language and art had a harmonious development with his personality. Thus even while still in secondary school p'Bitek composed and directed a full length Opera.

In 1953, he published a novel in the Lwo language of the Acholi people, Lak Tar Kinyero Wi Lobo (Are your Teeth White? Then Laugh). This was followed three years later by the first draft of the original Lwo traditional poetry, Wer Pa Lawino (Song of Lawino) which for obvious reasons colonial publishing houses rejected.

The bard's first degree thesis was devoted to the oral literature of the Acholi and Lango. Between his secondary school days and 1966 when the final draft of Wer Pa Lawino was written, p'Bitek was devoted to both studying and experimenting on Lwo traditional poetry.

His father was reputed as a good story teller who was very witty in his use of proverbs. His mother was a great singer thirty four of whose songs the poet has presented in Horn of My Love.¹ The early influence of his parents on his development was greatly re-inforced by his active involvement in the study and practice of his traditional poetry. Commenting on the nature of English education in Acholiland in p'Bitek's time. Gerald Moore observes:

A number of teachers … were themselves singers and players of the ‘nana’, the seven-stringed boat-zither which is the favourite instrument of the Acholi poet. These teachers were just in time to collect songs from some of the great pre-colonial singers, as well as composing many new ones of their own … Thus the new educated class in Acholiland contained many who refused to let English education turn them aside from the language and literature of their own people.²

From the poet's background, therefore, we discern a conscious objective in his training which culminated in his maturity as, not just a poet but, a traditional poet.

The world view of the bard's songs is the world view of the Acholi traditional society occasionally tinted by contemporary experience. A central issue in Song of Lawino is the disruption of the marriage institution. In the Acholi (as well as African) traditional society, marriage is regarded as a sacred union. There is room for polygamy in the sense that love is conceived as sharing, and what there is to share is the husband's love. But then, the first wife is not without her due recognition. In fact, there is an Acholi proverb which says, ‘Your first wife is your mother.’³ It is the negligence of this recognition that Lawino is so bitter about. It is the cause of the marital disharmony in Ocol's family. This situation elicits a song from Lawino.

Listen Ocol, you are the son of a Chief,
Leave foolish behaviour to little children
It is not right that you should be laughed at in a song
Songs about you should be songs of praise!

In Song of Prisoner we also note the lament of the disruption of family union which the prisoner suffers. The effect of prostitution on the matrimonial institution is also harped on in Song of Malaya.

The harmonious existence of the traditional society with the environment and the closeness of man to nature are usually celebrated in this world view. The recognition of this reality in his poetry is significant. For instance, Lawino shares such intimate and fond relationship with pots, grinding stones, Acholi dances, cooking stones, and describes them with such passion that we notice how much a part of her environment these things are.

The Acholi community like any other African community is one which conceives of time in terms of the natural rhythm of life. Man's leisure is dictated by the rhythm of work. We can therefore understand Lawino's concern about Ocol's relation to time. Time according to Lawino is not exhaustible and a natural rhythm of life dictates the time for various human activities. People do things in obedience to the rhythm of the day, the rhythm of the weeks, and even months. Precisely, in a traditional society, the concept of time is the concept of work.

Through her criticism of Ocol's addiction to artificial time, Lawino hints at the issues of dignity and collective consciousness which are integral parts of a traditional society. Ocol's new understanding of time makes him step from the position of the leadership expected of him to isolationism. The prisoner in Song of Prisoner would want to break out of prison to join in traditional dances and rites. He recognises and emphasises the traditional value in collective consciousness.

Childbirth and children are significant issues in the community. They prop up marriage. A fruitful marriage leads to satisfaction and confidence on the part of the man, and the joy of motherhood on the part of the woman. The community also shares in the joy. We understand, therefore, Lawino's praise of manhood, fertility and the virtues of procreation in the Acholi culture. Even the Malaya emphasises this when she in Song of Malaya sings of the deception of men into believing that they are the fathers of their bastard children.

In the same vein, the Malaya condemns women who ‘eat lizard eggs’ to avoid bearing children. Within this world-view we appreciate Lawino's concern about Ocol's impersonal interaction with his children. The cries and coughs of children are fondly responded to and with pride by parents. It is therefore, extraordinary to fail to love and cherish children. Thus, Lawino asks:

What is sweeter
Than the cries of children?(4)

Lullabies and reference to children's songs in Song of Prisoner underline the world view of the poems on children.

Song of Prisoner, written in what one might call movements, spans over fifteen of such movements. The title of each movement for p'Bitek sums up the central poetic image. The choice of the titles is equally significant. Almost all pick strings of the traditional Acholi community environment and experience: ‘dung of chicken’, ‘wounded crocodile’, ‘black mud’, ‘sacred rock’, ‘soft grass’, ‘cattle egret’, ‘undergrowth’, etc., stir up images of common experience in the Acholi traditional society.

The celebration of bravery and strength is common experience, too. Traditional societies of the Eastern and Central Africa are known for their celebration of military exploits, war, and the like in their praise poetry. The philosophy behind such celebration underlines the competitive spirit of the people in such matters. Thus, a remembrance of one's prowess, bravery and previous exploits, acts as fuel to one's ambition and concept of his ability. It is within this philosophical and traditional Acholi reality that the prisoner's violent outbursts can be appreciated:

See the muscles
Of my arms,
I can break your neck,
Do you realise that?
Do you know
I was a footballer
And a boxer?
I have been a wrestler
And a runner,
I am a great hunter,
I have killed three buffaloes
And a hippopotamus
Single-handed …(5)

The pattern of, and the spirit underlying the outburst are purely traditional. Okot p'Bitek however understands that the times are modern and therefore extends this traditional poetic form to accommodate certain modern experiences which the traditional society has become accustomed to. Thus, the prisoner is not only an accomplished brave man within the traditional context but also a ‘footballer’ and a ‘boxer’ (modern forms of sports).

The Acholi world strongly believes in witchcraft which is considered as a crime not only against the individual but also against society. Witches are mischievous and therefore not to be allowed in the society. p'Bitek also accommodates this religious belief in his songs. Thus in an effort to assert his innocence the prisoner says:

Brother,
I am not a witch,
I was not caught
Dancing stark naked
Around your house …(6)

The extended family system is revered usually within the society of p'Bitek's poetry. Blood relationship, as in the real traditional society, is traced and emphasised within the clan. p'Bitek's poetry celebrates this reality when Lawino condemns people and circumstances which tend to strain or sever such ties. Ocol and his brother, we are told, do not see ‘eye to eye’ because of party differences. Modern politics and the attendant obsession with material gains from political positions lead brothers into forgetting traditional values and the ethnic or lineage warmth that are supposed to bind them. Sharing and caring no longer exist. Sings Lawino,

Ocol does not share
Millet bread with his brother
Water from the public well
Is the only thing they share!
Ocol does not enter
His brother's house
You would think
There was homicide between them
That has not been settled …(7)

This development is further expressed when the prisoner presents the prevalence of political thuggery, elimination of opponents and the travesty of justice which feature in modern politics. The mean confidence with which he peels off the prevailing ironies of the new system is significant.

… The best lawyers
Will defend me,
Our black nationalist judges
And those who hired me
Will set me
Free …(8)

The new party politics does not make sense in the traditional community as the real issue is the material deprivation of the peasantry. Hence, Lawino contends:

If only the parties
Would fight poverty
With the fury
With which they fight each other
If disease and ignorance
Were assaulted
With the deadly vengeance
With which Ocol fights his mother's son
The enemies would have been
Greatly reduced by now.(9)

The prisoner's concern is vehemently expressed when he contemplates the comfort of the Chief's dog against the background of his children's hunger and disease.

The fight for Uhuru was meaningful for the Acholi traditional society only in the context of the traditional concept of freedom. Freedom for the traditional society meant more than chasing the colonial masters out of power. It meant freedom in all its ramifications; freedom from oppression, exploitation. The irony which followed the achievement of Uhuru is the source of disillusionment for the society. Uhuru becomes synonymous with police brutality, exploitation, oppression of the peasantry and the lowly by the few inheritors of the white man's institution of power. Opportunists exploit the situation to oppress the true heroes of Uhuru. This Acholi experience is articulated in p'Bitek's poetry. He asks in desperation:

What is Uhuru
When all my thoughts
Are deep and silent rivers
Blocked up by concrete walls
Of fear and black suspicions?

He cannot understand this situation of freedom when he asks—

How can I think freely
When the very air
Has ears larger than
Those of the elephant
And keener than the bones
Of the ‘ngege’ fish?
Why are the words I speak
Captured and locked up
In a safe?(10)

Freedom of speech of the individual is seen in the light of the poet's freedom in the traditional society. The poet is revered and even expected to speak out on behalf of the people. He could criticise those in authority without running any risks of incarceration. A poet who keeps ‘silent in the face of tyranny’ is considered irrelevant to the society.

Lawino also cannot understand the talk about Uhuru when materialism and power lead brothers into discordant existence, when murders and hatred reign all over the place. She asks:

Is this the unity of Uhuru?
Is this the Peace
That Independence brings?(11)

The prisoner, a spokesman for all prisoners of body and conscience, therefore longs for the real Uhuru, the real freedom. For him, real freedom is in the uninhibited communion with the traditional environment, with nature. He wants to ‘breathe the air’ of his own choice, ‘Wake up early / Before the morning birds / Begin to sing’; Walk ‘On the soft grass / Of the “olet” grazing ground / And share the sleepy air / With the cows and goats’; sleep ‘With the sand / At the sea shore’.¹²

Although p'Bitek leans much on the side of tradition, he does recognise the problem of book-illiteracy. He is aware that only a small percentage of the population of his society can read what he writes. As a result he devotes some time to certain experiences commonly shared by the literate group which he presents in the character of Ocol. This affords the ‘modern’ group the opportunity to introspect. Translating some of his works from the indigenous language into English and writing the others straight in English, the poet is able to reach this ‘modern’ audience.

To Okot p'Bitek the ‘modern’ (Western-educated) Acholi man tends to stir up

… a feeling of pity similar to the one
the freed slaves of eighteenth century America
drew as a result of the near-zero nature of
their cultural status.(13)

S. E. Ogude commenting on the extent of the confusion of the freed slave contends that:

The transition or more properly, the transformation from slave to free man did not indeed involve a change in cultural status … The result was that the initial reaction of the freed slave (and this also holds true for the colonial people) was not to gather the shreds of his shattered cultural history, or to embark on a voyage of self-discovery, but to take the easy way out: to wear the garb of his erstwhile masters.¹⁴

My contention is that Ogude could easily have had this in mind in that attempt to interpret what could be aptly described as the Ocol mentality in p'Bitek's poetry. And it is the poet's mentality that the poet's ‘modern’ audience commonly share.

The poet's allusions to the ‘minister’, the ‘Big Chief’ in Song of Prisoner, like the role of Ocol in Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol are made to draw attention to the failure of the Acholi (African) elite in spite of hard-won opportunities. Of course, their failure is measured using the yardstick of the traditional Acholi values.

Institutionalised prostitution, as we note in Song of Malaya (whore), Western system of democracy and politics are some of the other experiences which the poet identifies as modern and which make sense to a modern audience. The modern judicial system with all its pride in the nature of Western Law as an ass; christianity featuring its various contradictions; urbanisation and expensive western-type farms are some of the modern elements which Okot p'Bitek includes in his poetry.

The inclusion of these elements in p'Bitek's poetry makes it relevant to the modern reading audience. It helps to situate the poetry in contemporary times.

The characters of Ocol, Clementine (in Song of Ocol and Song of Lawino) ‘Big Chief’, the ‘Minister’, the Malaya (in Song of Prisoner and Song of Malaya) are recognisable in the modern society and among the modern black elites to whom the poet directs his songs.

The inclusion of these modern elements and characters, the mode of presentation of his poetry, etc., provide Okot p'Bitek with the garb of modernity which his poetry needs to be completely relevant to the contemporary society.

It is significant, however, that these modern features of his poetry are accommodated only within the thematic framework of his art. His aesthetic values, artistic techniques, style and form of his poetry are basically traditional. In other words, whereas elements of his modern garb could be found in WHAT he says, his traditional, artistic essence is found in HOW he says it—his techniques, his style, the form of his poetry—and this constitutes the sum total of the concept of the poet in the traditional society. What p'Bitek has consciously done is to extend the form and techniques, the frontiers of traditional poetry to accommodate the new experiences which constitute modernity.

Perhaps, one should assume this as a point of departure from which we could look at Okot p'Bitek's literary techniques against the background of the traditional society.

Okot p'Bitek's poetry is written in the song tradition of the Acholi traditional society. He insists that his poems are songs and emphasises this when he dedicates Song of Ocol to his father and mother who? he acknowledges first, taught him to sing. The poems adopt the various forms of traditional songs which exist in his society. An illustration of this can be found in parts of his poetry which approximate to the satirical verse forms and songs of abuse of the Acholi people. Lawino, in her description of her rival, Clementine sings:

Her lips are red-hot
Like glowing charcoal,
She resembles the wild cat
That has dipped its mouth in blood,
Her mouth is like raw yaws
It looks like an open ulcer
Like the mouth of a field …(15)

The origin of this form of satire can be better appreciated when compared with an Acholi satirical verse which the poet presents in Horn of my Love.

His eyes died long ago,
You can see clouds in them;
The death of the eyes of the teacher.
Clouds are visible in them, Oh;
His eyes died long ago;
The teacher does not leave his glasses behind;
His eyes died long ago;
You can see clouds in them.(16)

Satirical songs are functional within the traditional set-up. In his poetry Okot p'Bitek adopts traditional satirical forms to moral ends. Lawino sings us a song for the unfortunate mother whose daughter is useless and mannerless.

The mother of the beautiful girl
Dies on the way to the well
As if she has no daughter
Her girl has no manners
What is to be done?
The mother of the girl
Dies on the grinding stone
In the bush to collect firewood!(17)

Okot p'Bitek also adopts the dirge in his poetry. The form of the dirge he adopts to mourn the death of the dictator in Song of Prisoner is that which abuses the dead.

Let the people
Drink and dance,
Let them rejoice,
For
The corrupt dictator
Is dead.
The noose on their necks
Is cut …(18)

Commenting on dirges that attack the dead, p'Bitek says,

The body of the dead person is always treated with great respect and fear, and the burial rites are conducted with dignity and restraint. But in this group of songs the Acholi turn upon the dead with a viciousness which is not easy to explain.¹⁹

The close similarity between the dirge quoted above from Song of Prisoner and another Acholi dirge which p'Bitek presents in Horn of My Love is significant and illustrates the fact of a common source for p'Bitek's poetry and traditional poetry in the Acholi society.

The witch is dead;
It is good that he is dead.
You, Ulula,
Touch his penis,
See if it is cold and soft …
Ee, the witch is dead, and it is good news,(20)

In Song of Lawino, the dirge form is further exploited. Lawino mourns the ‘loss’ of her husband to the traditional society using the dirge,

O, my clansmen
.....Let us mourn the death of my husband
The death of a Prince
The ash that was produced
By a great fire!
O, this homestead is utterly dead …(21)

Besides original creations of his own along the traditional forms, Okot p'Bitek also picks up existing Acholi traditional songs which he modifies in parts and fuses into his poetry. Examples abound as a comparison of his own recreations in his poetry with the original versions published in his anthology of Acholi songs (Horn of My Love) will illustrate. The first is the Love song which Lawino sings.

She has taken the road to Nimule
She will come back tomorrow
His eyes are fixed on the road
Saying, Bring Alyeka to me
That I may see her …(22)

The original version as presented in Horn of My Love goes thus:

She has taken the path to Nimule;
She will return tomorrow
As she walked away her buttocks danced
Bring Alyeka, let me see her …(23)

The original version is much longer than that presented in Song of Lawino. The poet changes some of the phrases, omits whole lines and adds new ones perhaps to suit the immediate needs of his poetry and audience. In that case, he demonstrates the contention that creativity is given fullest realisation in performance as performance demands the poet's sense of judgement vis-a-vis his audience and other inevitable factors.

Commenting on the unique style and overwhelmed by the successful application of traditional poetic techniques which form the basis of Okot p'Bitek's poetry, Gerald Moore asks:

What are the courses of this extraordinary style, with the unfailing freshness and sharpness of its images, its range of mood, its ability to gather up and convey to us whole distinctive way of life in work and play, in sorrow and in joy?²⁴

The effectiveness of p'Bitek's traditional poetic style is not in question. However, it will be interesting to note aspects of his style.

The pice in the poet's techniques lies in his use of language. Okot p'Bitek is aware that the world of his poetry is the world of non-native speakers of the English language. He endeavours to communicate to his audience in the most intimate of languages. Hence he presents his earliest songs in the Lwo language. As he endeavours to capture a wider African audience, he translates these works into English while at the same time endeavouring to capture as much as possible the typical traditional Acholi idiomatic and rhetorical usages. To achieve this end, the poet flexes and bends the English language to accommodate those aspects of his society's linguistic heritage which contribute to the status of his art as traditional. It is, therefore, not accidental that the prisoner expresses his lot thus:

Big Chief
Is dancing my wife
And cracking
My sacred rock,(25)

In the ordinary sense, the first two lines are an un-English expression. Those same lines contain a high degree of semantic violation. Human beings do not usually form the object of the verb to dance. Notwithstanding the un-Englishness of the construction coupled with the attendant violation of semantics, the expression makes a world of meaning to the African audience. The image it conjures is very sharp. The last two lines are very idiomatic and quite profound with meaning within the context of the world of this poem. Other examples of this flexibility of language abound throughout the poems.

I had mentioned semantic violations as if they were not within the realm of poetic eloquence. The fact is that within the traditional society, the poet exercises unlimited linguistic freedom which he exploits to create effect. Semantic violations are therefore used not only to create vivid images but also to excite the audience. The violations can come in the form of exaggerations, comparison of unrelated things, etc. The end result is what the poet strives at, and that is poetic eloquence.

We are excited and our imagination fired when p'Bitek's prisoner informs us:

There is a carpenter
Inside my head,
He knocks nails
Into my skull,

and when he complains,

My penis
Is an elephant's trunk
Vomiting blood
Like a woman
In her moon. …(26)

The violation of semantics in the lines quoted above consists in the presentation of the naturally impossible. What the poet achieves here is eloquence, poetic eloquence which has come through the firing of our imagination. We imagine the impossible situation where a carpenter can be accommodated in a human skull; where a penis can be so extraordinary in its size. There is, therefore, a conscious play on fantasy. The audience is transported beyond the realm of reality. This is a level of intensification, a technique which the traditional poet finds invaluable.

Invocations are lavishly used in the poems to achieve immediacy. Their use also underlines the nature of rhetorical usages in the everyday life of the traditional African. Lawino does invoke her ‘clansmen’; In Song of Prisoner, invocations of the clan and clansmen are also made. This technique is an element of direct address which gives a dramatic effect to what is said. In addition to the clansmen, the ancestors are also invoked. There is in fact a lavish use of the elements of direct address and dramatic evocations. Lawino uses this very often. In any case that is the general style in the songs.

Okot p'Bitek's fictional characters pose as if addressing other characters directly. There are of course interruptions in this posture when the personæ invoke a third party. The prisoner addresses various groups of persons and individuals. He also addresses even his dead father.

You
My old man
Rotting in the earth,
What an idiot
You were.(27)

There are many other such direct addresses: ‘Wife / Wife / Are you asleep …’; ‘Wake up / You pressmen of the world’ … ; (You Waiter’, etc. We note the constant use of the second person pronoun in such direct addresses.

In Song of Malaya, it is the same style. The Malaya addresses the various groups that constitute her customers. When a third party is invoked, the second person pronoun is generally avoided and the party is addressed by name or title. This is illustrated when the whore interrupts her direct address to her customers to address her co-professionals:

Sister Whores
Wherever you are …(28)

The dramatic effect of these invocations is the best p'Bitek can achieve through the medium of writing. In using the device, there is an awareness of the fact that traditional poetry is better realised through performance. Hence he approximates to this essence of performance.

The characterisation techniques adopted by the poet are those used by traditional artists. Generally, in the traditional society, because of the closeness of man to nature and his environment, inanimate objects and abstract concepts are personified. Lawino tells us about grinding stones. There is the ‘sister stone’; there is also the ‘mother stone’ which she describes thus:

The mother stone
Has a hollow stomach,
A strange woman
She never gets pregnant;
And her daughter
Never gets fatter …(29)

The Malaya could also personify the noise she hears made by another whore's bed thus:

The soft drumming on the
Dancing mattress
The bedstead gritting
Her teeth …(30)

The use of metaphors and metaphorical descriptions in Okot p'Bitek's poetry conjures up primal images. There is no room for artificial or cosmetic images. This adds to the traditional status of his poetry. In many cases, the metaphors are extended to achieve intensification of his poetic eloquence. The prisoner's description of his fate is full of extended metaphors. For instance he says of the wound in his head:

Look at the laughing wound
In my head
Its cracked negro lips
Painted with dirty brown Ochre

and tells us that his nose

Is a broken dam,
Youthful blood leaps
Like a cheetah
After a duiker(31)

Occasionally the symbolism implied in the metaphors is humorous. For instance, when the Malaya advises her sister Malayas to remember to carry their ‘boxing gloves’ in their hand-bags the audience is tempted to smile. The neologism stirs up the image of sports and their associations. The allusion is germane and recognisable. The elements of wit and humour are rendered with great vigour.

Armed with powerful and compelling imagery, the poet's voice is elegaic in places with a sensibility grounded in the natural and perceived world of the Acholi. To achieve intensity in his poetic oratory, the poet incorporates praise chants and praise names. Ocol is the ‘son of a bull’, Lawino is the ‘daughter of a bull’, etc.

p'Bitek organises his lines to achieve intensity of thought or climax of experience. There is a certain level of listing which comes to a climax of experience towards the end of his lines. In addition, the poet makes a vast use of repetitions and parallel phrasing to achieve a cumulative effect. Talking about his children's education the prisoner says:

My children are
Not among them,
My children do
Not go to school
My children will
Never go to school.(32)

The repetition of ‘my children’ coupled with the parallel involved in the alternating lines leads to the climax of the prisoner's thoughts of the impossibility of his children going to school.

In addition to the use of repetitions and parallel phrases, the bard adopts the use of short lines to aid memorisation which traditional poetry is capable of achieving during performance. At times he uses single-word lines also to ensure the reader's attention and to remove boredom.

There is also the element of the traditional sage reflecting on the present decadence, on communal memories pleading, questioning, telling, cautioning, and pointing things out to the younger and less wise members of the community. Sometimes he mocks, contemplates, challenges, using illustrations and admonitions from the traditional community repertory.

The success of the poet's traditional poetic forms, style and techniques is measured in his clear achievement of the poetic image which has been made possible through the various levels of intensification which he applies.

Precisely, Okot p'Bitek qualifies as a traditional poet albeit in modern garb as he bases the modern elements in his poetry on the technical repertory of traditional African literature. What we experience in his poetry is a modernism the emergence of which is from a clearly traditional African poetic tradition. Chinweizu and the others hold that,

The artist in traditional African milieu spoke for and to his community. His imagery, themes, symbolisms and forms were drawn from a communally accessible pool. He was heard. He made sense.³³

My contention is that Okot p'Bitek as a poet could not be justly conceived in any language short of the above. In addition, he has in his poetry ensured continuity between traditional and modern poetry as we find him relevant in contemporary times in spite of his style.

Notes

1. D. I. Nwoga, ‘Modern African Poetry: The Domestication of a Tradition’ in African Literature Today 10, ed, Eldred Durosimi Jones (New York: African Publishing Company, 1969), p. 38.

2. Gerald Moore, Twelve African Writers (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1980), pp. 173-4.

3. Chris Wanjala, For Home and Freedom (Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau, 1980), p. 72.

4. Okot p'Bitek, Song of Lawino (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966, rpt. 1973), p. 93.

5. Okot p'Bitek, Two Songs (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971), pp. 13-4.

6. p'Bitek, p. 25.

7. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, pp. 182-3.

8. p'Bitek, Two Songs, p. 59.

9. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, p. 88.

10. p'Bitek, Two Songs, p. 50.

11. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, p. 183.

12. p'Bitek Two Songs, p. 91.

13. Nwachukwu-Agbada, ‘The Morality of Freedom and the Immorality of the Unliberated Psyche in the Poetry of Okot p'Bitek’ (A paper presented at the 4th Annual Conference of the Literary Society of Nigeria, University of Benin, Feb. 1984), p. 2.

14. Nwachukwu-Agbada, p. 2.

15. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, p. 22.

16. Okot p'Bitek, Horn of My Love (London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1974), p. 76.

17. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, p. 91.

18. p'Bitek Two Songs, p. 78.

19. p'Bitek, Horn of My Love, p, 152.

20. p'Bitek, p. 19.

21. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, p. 207.

22. p'Bitek, p. 215.

23. p'Bitek, Horn of My Love, p. 42.

24. Moore, p. 72.

25. p'Bitek, Two Songs, p. 44.

26. p'Bitek, p. 42.

27. p'Bitek, p. 36.

28. p'Bitek, p. 141.

29. p'Bitek, Song of Lawino, p. 73.

30. p'Bitek, Two Songs, p. 177,

31. p'Bitek, p. 14.

32. p'Bitek, p. 101.

33. Chinweizu et al., Toward the Decolonisation of African Literature, Vol. I (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1980), p. 241.