Poetry as Dialogue: A reading of recent Anglophone Nigerian poetry

Egya, Sule Emmanuel

doi:10.4000/eces.697

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…Niyi Osundare is a Nigerian poet who belongs to the second generation of modern African poets (Adebiyi, 2015; Adebiyi-Adelabu and Aguele, 2019; Egya, 2011). These poets are famed for their rejection of the Euro-modernist style that dominates the poetry of their precursors.…”

Section: Literary Background Of Niyi Osundarementioning

confidence: 99%

The aesthetic sublimation of pain in Niyi Osundare’sCity Without People

Adebiyi-Adelabu

2021

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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Niyi Osundare is a Nigerian poet-scholar, who was a victim of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe in 2005 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A few years after the cataclysmic event, Osundare versified his experience in the poetry volume entitled City Without People. This article examines the narration of his painful experience and memories in the collection. I begin by exploring the thematization of pain in the volume, before proceeding to argue that the poet’s pain, largely psychic, is a product of losses of various kinds. The article goes further, demonstrating how the poet “worked through” the pain to attain wellness. Relying on insights from trauma theory, complemented by some assumptions about the concept of scriptotherapy, the analysis of poems drawn from across the collection demonstrates the paradox of using pain to birth writing and using writing to kill pain.

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Section: Literary Background Of Niyi Osundarementioning

confidence: 99%

The aesthetic sublimation of pain in Niyi Osundare’sCity Without People

Adebiyi-Adelabu

2021

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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Land of cemetery: funereal images in the poetry of Musa Idris Okpanachi

Umezurike

2018

Tydskr Letterkd

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This paper focuses on Musa Idris Okpanachi’s poetry: The Eaters of the Living (2007), From the Margins of Paradise (2012), and Music of the Dead (2016). Nigeria, even after the military had relinquished power over a decade ago, is still faced with the issues that provoked the trope of protest in much of the poetry published between the mid-eighties and late nineties. Okpanachi’s poetry revisits these issues, demonstrating that democracy has been no less horrifying than military despotism. Dark, haunting images of blood, corpses, and cemetery recur in all three collections, depicting the regularity of death in the nation. I argue that Okpanachi employs funereal imagery to comment on the state’s morbid relationship with its citizenry. The Nigerian state is represented as murderous, so death fulfills its political objective. I conclude that although Okpanachi articulates a cynical commentary on postcolonial Nigeria, he marshals his creative energies to illuminate the political moment of his time.

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Poetry as Dialogue: A reading of recent Anglophone Nigerian poetry

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

The aesthetic sublimation of pain in Niyi Osundare’sCity Without People

The aesthetic sublimation of pain in Niyi Osundare’sCity Without People

Land of cemetery: funereal images in the poetry of Musa Idris Okpanachi

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