Ewì is a modern genre of Yoruba poetry that freely draws on the vast repertoire of traditional oral literary forms and inhabits the intersection between the written and the oral. Ewì resulted from the impact of literacy and missionary education on Yoruba poetry and remains an enduring testimony to the capacity of the culture to renew itself. Even though contemporary recognition of the genre dates from the 1960s, the standard practice has been to create a link between it and the efforts of mission-educated poets among the Ẹgba of the nineteenth century. Ewì is expanding in form and value and continues to attract new practitioners