Abstract:
This article focuses on three related poems inspired by the geology and
archaeology of the Rift Valley, using them to develop an argument about
Ben Okri’s humanism, optimism and symbolist technique. All three poems
are connected by an imagined locus in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and
stimulated by the discoveries of fossils of the earliest hominids. Each is
distinguished by focus on a particular type of rock, standing in for periods of
human development, and thence with the idea of Africa as the origin of
humanity generally. These are meditations on human history and
imagination from the earliest appearance in Africa of the predecessors of
Homo sapiens sapiens to urgent present-day concerns. Okri suggests that
through poetry humankind can leap across a postcolonial self/other divide to
straddle the polarities of darkness and light. I suggest that his belief is that,
through the Imaginatio Creatix, we can re-dream the world and so access
our higher nature.
