Abstract:
This study investigated new trends, styles and themes in Swahili Poetry of Ushairi Wenu and
Sokomoko as published in Taifa Leo Newspaper for the period between January 1st 2018 and
August 31st 2019. Poetry is an old genre which has gone through various developmental
stages in terms of writing, styles and themes over a long period of time. Kiswahili poetry has
continued to evolve at different historical periods since the time prosodic rules were followed
by all authors of Kiswahili poetry to emergence of popular poetry published in newspapers.
New trends and style are always exhibited by different authors of poetry because of
creativity. A lot of research has been done in scholarly poetry as compared to popular poetry,
especially poems published in newspapers. In order to fill the scholarly gap, the researcher
wanted to find out if poets in this newspapers exhibit new trends and style. The objectives of
this study were to: Establish new trends in poems of Ushairi Wenu and Sokomoko; analyse
new style in the poems of Ushairi Wenu and Sokomoko; and evaluate new themes in the
poems of Ushairi Wenu and Sokomoko. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the
research was guided by two theories: The realism theory by Hegel (1979) and the stylistic
theory by Leech and Short (2007). The realism theory was employed to identify themes
reflected in these poems while the stylistic theory was used to analyze the new trends and
perspectives in stylistic features. The data used in this research was collected in the library
where the researcher read books, journals, newspapers and thesis which were handy in
apprehending the topic of study. The research used purposive sampling to select 38 poems in
Ushairi Wenu and Sokomoko because out of the 160 poems, researcher was only interested in
poems that depicted new trends in Swahili poetry, new perspectives in style and themes. The
researcher used descriptive design in data presentation and analysis. The findings from the
research indicated that poems in Ushairi Wenu and Sokomoko depicted new trends in how
they were written. These included the use of sheng’, use of second person narration and use
of opening and closing formula. Consequently, new style perspectives identified were: Use of
nicknames, second person narration, length of poems, brief titles, setting and language.
Human character, corruption, drug abuse, love among others were the themes identified in
those poems. This research will benefit teachers of Kiswahili and language researchers
through informing them about the new poetic developments. Parents will also benefit, given
that the CBC curriculum (Competence Based Curriculum) requires parental involvement in
the learning of their children.
