Poetry in Africa
African poetry encompasses a wide variety of traditions arising from Africa's 55 countries and from evolving trends within different literary genres. The field is complex, primarily because of Africa's original linguistic and cultural diversity and partly because of the effects of slavery and colonisation, the believe in religion and social life which resulted in English, Portuguese and French, as well as creole or pidgin versions of these European languages, being spoken and written by Africans across the continent.