Bate Besong: Themes and Style of Bate Besongs Works

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Culled from George Ngwane (1993). Bate Besong (Or the Symbol of Anglophone Hope). Limbe: Noomerac Press.

Batebesong

Themes
In most of his works Bate Besong criticises the roof by attacking the foundation... Bate Besong always comes back to where the rain began to beat us, not with the naivety of somebody who does not know what happened in the past but with the clairvoyance of somebody who knows what should happen in the future. ... But rather than resort to a trip of witch-hunting he is in search of a Promethean ideal; he is in search of change, for change is the only permanent rhythm in life. His poems conjure the bitter themes of Power Abuse like in the The Kaiser Lied,

You fed Kangoroo gonads
to the world press corps
to camouflage the soporific bankruptcy
of a traumatized brotherhood-in-sophistry,
already, shrouded in the obituarist lagoon
of wrong Deal! (p. 8)

They also tell the story of our country's fractured genesis like in Letter to Mongo Beti or the horrors of our concentration camps like in Prison Blues. Even when the subtitles of his poems throw invectives or eulogies at personalities, the contents dissect the anatomy of our moribund body politic and quite often end up with a frightening note of capital punishment and retribution.

Yet doomsday must freshen
the early morning dew
A cockerel woke me from the window
of our quiet Monrovia
there was the mummery of vultures gathered
like hyenas around
the decomposing carcass of
another civilian Doe
Letter to Mongo Beti (p.9)

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March 2008