In Search of Poem-Maps of the Swahili Seas: Three Sea Poems by Haji Gora Haji

Abstract

To what extent can a text borne in memory give texture, perspectives, meaning, dimensionality and sense to a place? Where is the locus of meaning in such a case? Can this locus be mapped? Questions about Swahili navigational poetry (poem-maps) motivate this reflection. Can similar repositories of sea experiences be read for biographical threads of the water body to which they refer? This essay explores these questions by focusing on narratives in and of the interstices, the small stories of encounter that mostly get obliterated in the retelling of historical events. In seeking to re-story the ocean in its East African manifestations, this paper turns to selected sea poetry of Zanzibar-based Haji Gora Haji, mariner, seafarer, minstrel, fisherman and poet. Haji Gora Haji’s words collapse time to point to other ways of knowing these seas.