The Art of Words

Abstract

In addition to storytelling, poetry has also been adopted by African LGBTQ communities as a creative method to give voice to deeply personal struggles and experiences of trauma, but also to express glimpses of faith, hope and love, and expectations of the future. This chapter focuses on a collection of LGBTQ poetry from across Africa, titled Walking the Tightrope (2016). The chapter examines how selected poems represent and reflect the ambivalent experiences of LGBTQ people with religion, specifically Christianity. These poems engage with religion critically, but also creatively, as through the arts of language LGBTQ writers give sacred meaning to their struggles, signify their lives with religious idiom, reclaim biblical and theological concepts, and give voice to their life experiences. Thus, the chapter foregrounds poetry as a creative method of queer African religious critique as well as reimagination.