Diop, David (1927-60). Poet of Cameroonian-Senegalese parentage, who spent his early childhood in Senegal and his adolescence in France. In his teens he was already writing militant anti-colonial poetry and took part in the setting-up of Présence africaine in Paris in 1947. On his return to Senegal, Diop taught in a secondary school in Dakar. In 1956 his only collection of poems, Coups de pilon, was published. In 1960 he was killed in a plane crash. A member of the Parti Africain de l'Indépendance, in his politics and in his poetry Diop opposed Senghor. Although the latter included Diop in his 1948 anthology, he regretted Diop's ‘lack of romanticism’ and hoped he would ‘grow more human with age’. Other critics have appreciated the deep humanism of Diop's revolutionary poetry. Because he adopts the point of view of the unprivileged majority, his picture of Africa foregrounds the pain and humiliation of colonialism. His work throbs with an infectious hatred of injustice and a confidence in the ability of Africans and all oppressed peoples to rise up and overcome it. His revolutionary commitment has been seen as inimical to the interests of poetry, but his poems, though brimming over with a seemingly spontaneous energy and intensity, are carefully crafted and have stood the test of time.
[Firinne Ni Chréach´in]
