The Rump and the Neck: Snippets from Somali Oral Poetry," Journal of the Korean Association of African Studies 25 (June 2007): 263-82

Abstract

This essay looks at Somali oral poetry, using poetry now committed to writing primarily from B. W. Andrzejewski and I. M. Lewis’s Somali Poetry: An Introduction, Basher Goth’s “Abdi Sinimoo and the Balwo Legacy,” Zainab Mohamed Jama’s “Fighting to Be Heard: Somali Women’s Poetry,” and Margaret Laurence’s A Tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose . Identifying the main genres of the poetry and discussing, with examples of poems, themes the poetry deals with, the essay shows that the beauty of the poetry debunks a stereotype of the Somali as a people bent on conflict, in the process forgetting the intense passion they exhibit in their poetry—whether it is passion for war and peace or whether it is passion for virtue and love.