A woman cried out upon seeing what looked like a corpse, a sheet-covered form lying on a stretcher. As volunteers wheeled it onto the stage, Boris Taleabong Alemnge recited a poem whose title spoke the unspoken: Death.
“The day you die, people will cry,” the 24-year-old told hundreds of audience members in an embattled part of southwest Cameroon. “But this will not stop the clock from ticking or the flowers from blooming.”
Mr. Alemnge is among a group of artists using spoken-word poetry to denounce ongoing bloodshed in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, where separatists are fighting government forces. The supposed corpse was a stage prop, but the tears and wails that greeted it were real.
The civil war has killed an estimated 6,500 people, a majority of them civilians, and displaced nearly 1 million since 2016.
Spoken word has gained new prominence in Cameroon as poets like Mr. Alemnge, who performs under the stage name ‘Penboy’, believe their art form taps into the everyday dangers of war zones that many people avoid talking about. “Death is inevitable, yet many people do not even want to think about it,” he said after a performance he organised in March to launch his latest album, RED.
Artists have found eager audiences who say they feel moved by the rhythms of the spoken word.
“I have watched crowds fall silent, then rise like waves, because his words have the power to heal,” said Prosper Langmi Ngunu, who watched Penboy’s performance.
Almost everyone in Anglophone areas has lost someone close to them. Mental health issues are common. So, too, is gang rape by members of the warring parties, contributing to a rise in teenage pregnancy.
The growing popularity of spoken-word events like Penboy’s gathering reflects how people are becoming less afraid to express their outrage, said another spoken-word artist who goes by Camila.
“Since we cannot pick guns to fight, we use the power of the spoken word to send across our message. Some find peace in it, others find healing, while some get educated,” she said.
Published – May 05, 2025 11:32 am IST