Anyways,to prove that I belong to the best poetry generation in Nigeria which is The second generation the wole Soyinka generation,I will let a third party pass the Verdict.
Let me reproduce a Guardian essay entitled The Nigerian Poetry Send the lost/careless Generation.part 1 published in 11th September,2016 on Guardian online authored by Christopher Anyokwu as reproduced below, enjoy the reading:
Nigerian poetry and the lost/careless generation – Part 1
By : Christopher Anyokwu
Date: 11 Sep 2016 :
"The concept of Nigerian poetry is at once as interesting and problematic as that of the Nigerian post-colony itself. Interesting because, regardless of its unstable and amorphous constitution, it has continued to subsist, defying, as it does, the law of gravity; and, problematic in one breath because its very definition and its constitutive properties vary from habitus to originary habitus with particular reference to ethnic claims and, hence, epistemic afflatus.
Given this problematic conceptualization of “Nigerian Poetry”, it has become something of a lazy, if normalizing, sleight-of-hand to speak, descriptively. The poetries emerging from within the geographic province of the nation-state as “Nigerian Poetry” is a group of ethnically-informed, religiously-nuanced and culture-bound verse-making whose critical appraisal must be conducted from within its specific socio-cultural ideational matrices.
But, like everything “Nigerian”, seeking to critique this body of dissimilar but inter-related poetries from an ethnically-informed prism would be misconstrued and denounced as an assault on logic, or, in political terms, as heretical, if not downright unpatriotic. But since the business of scholarship authorizes research as re-search, it therefore behooves us to rethink and re-conceptualize and, ultimately, re-operationalize the notion of Nigerian poetry with a view to properly situating its heuristic and hortatory potentialities. If, indeed, we take ourselves seriously in our determined pursuit of the truth about the integrity of the phenomenon of “Nigerian poetry”, we should be speaking of it in the plural, to wit, Nigerian poetries (in other words, Yoruba-English Poetry, Igbo-English Poetry, Urhobo-English poetry, Ika-English Poetry and so forth!).
To do that would, of course, create the uncomfortable impression of an “enemy national” out to put a knife to that which holds us together as a (homogenous?) people (‘Though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand, the defunct National Anthem proclaimed!). But beyond the political correctness of a pan-Nigerian posturing and/or the feel-good, anodyne shibboleths of patriotese, the prickly truth of the heterogeneity of our poetries continues to stare us in the face. What, in concrete terms, does, say Wole Soyinka’s poetry have in common with Christopher Okigbo’s poetry; or what communion has Niyi Osundare’s verse with Tanure Ojaide’s poetry? To venture an answer here, however, it is pretty straightforward to stress the point that these poets all hail from the same country, write in and speak English, the country’s official language, and, to that extent, are all united by factors of context, that is, Nigerian polity, and language, that is, the English language. But if we take the trouble to interrogate the linguistic and the contextual minutiae of their work, it would become quite apparent that what divides these literary avatars are more deeply-entrenched than what unites them.
The troubling and vexatious details of the strife-riven ethnically-charged Nigerian politics do not only shape their linguistic ideology but, far more significantly, colour their reading of history and the relationship between poet and polity. To speak a bit more about language, it is common knowledge that every writer from a postcolonial country wrestles with the English language, especially one from an Anglo-phone nation-state (cf: T.S. Eliot’s “intolerable wrestle with words”). As Niyi Osundare typically brilliantly posits in the case of a Yoruba-born Nigerian poet, when two languages meet, they kiss and quarrel. Does this apply to both the Igbo-born poet and the Yoruba-born poet in equal measure and in every material particular? Not quite, we daresay: for Igbo and Yoruba, though both of them, tone or tonal syllable-timed languages, have phonological, syntactic, morphological and, thus, semantic features unique to each of them.
Embedded and deeply-ingrained in each language is a particular philosophy of life which, in turn, invariably permeates the social values, the patterns of thinking, religious outlook and the epistemology of that particular ethnic group. Yoruba is Yoruba, Igbo is Igbo. What, therefore, comes through as Soyinka’s poetry, for example, is an admixture of Yoruba oral tradition and western poetic tradition. By the same token, Okigbo’s poetry is steeped in autochthonous Igbo orality and a welter of foreign-derived literary traditions.
Using both Soyinka and Okigbo as template, we can very easily analyse the socio-cultural features of any Nigerian poet. Therefore, just as it has become increasingly difficult to speak of African literature due largely to the multiplicity of nationalities, ethnicities and communicative idioms which make up Africa, so does the description of Nigerian Poetry as a single, homogenous body of writing leave much to be desired. What is being proposed here, for whatever it is worth, is that, in the light of present realities, geopolitical and all, it may be more intellectually rewarding and, of course, more factual to take another, more dispassionate look at the criticism of Nigerian poetry, and, this time, from a decidedly ethnically-informed perspective.
The merit of this procedure is that, shorn of the lie of cultural homogeneity, the critic is more equipped and better informed to plumb the depths of any Nigerian writing under analysis as he or she is required to situate the work within its socio-cultural milieu and, thereafter, stake out its proper place within the larger Nigerian social life. Poetry originating from the so-called minority ethnic groups would have their day in the sun. We can then have, say, Efik-English poetry, Esan-English Poetry, Isoko-English Poetry and Nupe-English Poetry and so on. Beyond showcasing the vast cultural diversity of Nigerian Poetry as a whole, these poetries from hitherto suppressed and marginalized social groups would be brought to the fore coupled with the fact that their academic or discursive respectability would be established. To this extent, therefore, uprooted scholars and prodigal researchers must recognize the need to return home to their villages and localities to collaborate with their unlettered townsfolk who are the custodians of their artistic patrimony lest they die out with their artistic heritage. To be sure, the importance of this town-gown synergy cannot be overstated, particularly against the backdrop of the depredations of globalization.
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In talking about what we have referred to as the “Lost or Careless Generation” of Nigerian Poetry, it is important to clear the deck from the viewpoint of periodisation before we delve into the nitty-gritty of the modus operandi, the distinguishing features as well as the triumphs and troughs of the emergent tendency. Many scholars and historians of literature over the years have tried to furnish what in their considered views could be regarded as the definitive periodisation of Nigerian Poetry.
Some of these scholars include Harry Garuba, Biodun Jeyifo, Donatus Ibe Nwoga, Senanu and Theo Vincent and Tijan Sallah and Tanure Ojaide. Jeyifo remarks, for example, that: If there are now about five distinct generations of writers, critics and scholars of modern African literature, the first two generations came into their own in the epoch of the high tide of decolonization while the last two generations have been confronted with the specters of arrested decolonization, failing or collapsed states, economic stagnation, widespread autocratic misrule and the delegitimization of the grand narratives of emancipation which held that the liberation of African peoples in the modern world is indissolubly linked to the liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world.
In spite of the perceptive and near-accurate analysis of Nigerian literary history given by Biodun Jeyifo, it appears far more accurate and, indeed, intellectually rewarding to stick to the periodisaton provided by Sallah and Ojaide in their jointly-edited anthology of African poetry entitled New African Poetry: An Anthology. According to these African poet-critics, there are three distinct generational cohorts in Nigerian, nay, African poetry, namely (1) the Nationalist poets such as Nnamdi Azikiwe and Osadebe who wrote poetry in imitation of the 19th-century British poets, as part of the momentous anti-colonial struggle and the agitation for self-determination; (2) the Independence Generation, that is, African poets who came of age during the heyday of political independence across Africa; and, in the Nigerian situation, this refers to the so-called Wole Soyinka-Clark-Okigbo coterie; and (3) the group of African poets who had cut their teeth on the works of their immediate predecessors but dissatisfied with their precursors’ performance, saw the need to steer a different course, thus inaugurating at once a thematic and formal sea-change in Nigerian verse-making.
Sallah and Ojaide, both among this coterie of African poets, identify some characteristic features of this school/tendency/sensibility, features which include limpidity of diction, a clear class consciousness or poetic ideology, a sense of propaganda, instrumental orchestration of poetry, otherwise known as “performance poetry”, antiphony, the adroit incorporation of indigenous oral poetic forms (in the Yoruba context, such as oriki (panegyric poetry), ofo (incantations), Ijala (hunters’ chants, ese ifa (Ifa Divination poetry); iremoje (valedictory verse); owe (proverbial lore) alo apamo (riddles and jokes) and epe (curses/imprecations). Additionally, these poets regard themselves as agents of change – radical, progressive and revolutionary change – poet – prophet/seers, social gadflies, ideologues, notably left-leaning revolutionary arbiters of taste and social health. Among these poet seers are Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Okimba Launko, Funso Aiyejina, Obiora Udechukwu, Ossie Enekwe, Catherine Acholonu, Afam Akeh and Harry Garuba.
The impression has been created in much critical commentary that the third generation of Nigerian poets emerged out of the frustration felt by the readership over what has been variously described as the ‘obscurantism and eurocentrism’ of most of the [second] generation of modern Nigerian poets. Or, what Chinweizu et al characterize as ‘Euromodernism’ or ‘The Hopkins Disease’; or, to further flesh it out, ‘Hopkinsian syntactic jugglery, Poundian allusiveness and sprinkling of foreign phrases, and Eliotesque suppression of narrative and other logical linkages of the sort that creates obscurity in “The Waste Land”. This cultivation of obscurantism is also excoriated by Biodun Jeyifo when he comments that ‘The Older poets [i.e. the Soyinka coterie) generally deployed a diction and a metaphoric, highly allusive universe, calculated to exclude all but a small coterie of specialists…’
Given the fact that the second generation of Nigerian poets was to produce the first major body of poetry for sophisticated critical engagements, it was not surprising that their works have attracted in equal measure both high praise and acerbic denunciation, a vilification that came to a head with the publication of the Bolekaja Troika’s vitriol. Typically, in what he has called ‘Responses in Kind’, Soyinka has equally fought back pound for pound, taking his traducers to the cleaners in such mordant rejoinders as ‘Neo-Tarzanism: The poetics of Pseudo-Tradition’, ‘The Autistic Hunt; or, How to Marxmize Mediocrity’ and ‘Barthes, Leftocracy and Other Mythologies"
Now I must say with due sense of respect the classification of the five generations of poetry was done almost perfectly well but I make bold to disagree if it were based on the quality of impact and not driven by time or timing in the timeline analysis of checkered antecedence of poetry the first generation now would be the second generation and the second generation that is wole Soyinka generation would now be the first generation of Nigerian Poetry czars.Hence I too belong to the first generation and no need to change the rest of the three generations in the rear.Since none of the poetry czars of these three generations could dislodge the erstwhile first generation now the second generation tells a lot about the significance of poetry towards decolonization of the mind.
There seems to be a wave of poetry movement in Nigeria as encapsulated in the beautiful essay below:
The Ex-Puritan
Schism
A smiling man in a black jacket stands near bookshelves, captured in a black and white photo.
“What in the World is Happening in Nigeria?": Adedayo Agarau on the Recent Explosion of Nigerian Poetry on the World Stage
By Adedayo Agarau
If we must write about the new crop of Nigerian writers, we must write it through history.
If we must write about the new crop of Nigerian writers, we must write it through history. The angels did not just remember to stir the waters of Nigerian poetry today, bestowing upon them the evanescent gift of language and the ability to submit poems and support one another on Twitter/X. Nigerian poets ride on the backs of small hubs, community culture, and language already established by writers before them. Before Facebook or the arrival of social media, Nigeria had already been identified as a major literary hub from which writers of the global south had emerged. Before I was born, Professor Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 and was said to be "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence." In 1979, Chinua Achebe was awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit. We have had Cyprian Ekwensi, JP Clark, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, and Flora Nwapa, among others.
Earlier writing communities were formed in hostels, under trees, under the small light of nights where revered writers read to each other, published work in bulletins and formed collectives. Professor Niyi Osundare, whose poem made me fall in love with writing, Femi Osofisan, Odia Ofem, Tanure Ojaide, Festus Iyayi, and other writers of the second generation emerged with their sound nature and socio-political poetics heavily influenced by diverse Nigerian oral traditions. The history of Nigerian writers, contemporary or newer, has directly or indirectly been influenced by an earlier generation of brave writers who wrote despite.
As Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality reminds us, no text or artistic movement emerges in isolation; it is instead a mosaic of past voices and influences. Akin to Newton’s First Law, metaphorically applied in cultural studies, the movement we see today is a continuation, a response to the enduring currents that shaped its path. In fact, it feels wrong to define Nigerian poetry as a movement. We’re just writing and submitting because our voices are fresh and our languages primed, and the world is listening.
Nigerian poets ride on the back of small hubs, community culture, and language already established by writers before them.
This essay captures my firsthand experience of community, reflecting how Nigerian poets formed connections on Facebook and beyond. It does not aim to alienate, erase, or rewrite the history from which it draws. My experience of the Nigerian poetry hub is personal, shaped by where I lived and the communities I belonged to, and does not imply that other communities did not exist elsewhere.
Only a few months after discovering the poetry scene on 2go and meeting Rasak Malik—one of my earliest mentors—I slid into Kukogho Iruesiri Samson’s DMs on Facebook Messenger and asked him to mentor me. A few years before, I had seized the Anthology of West African Voices from a junior student we called Fufu Meje, my first encounter with poetry. Samson asked me how far I was willing to go, and I responded, “As far as you take me.” Samson was a Nigerian working in media who loved literature, had written several poems, and, like everyone, believed he could make something out of creative writing. Instead of focusing on writing his manuscript Devil's Pawn, which won the Dusty Manuscript Prize in 2015, Samson dedicated hours to the community he created on Facebook—Words, Rhymes, and Rhythms (WRR)—platforming thousands of Nigerian writers like me. Samson mentored me, edited my work, and published my first poem, "Freedom." WRR democratized access to literary resources, particularly for poets who lacked formal training or connections to established literary circles. By creating an inclusive environment, WRR enabled diverse voices to emerge, reflecting the multiplicity of Nigerian experiences.
Samson asked me how far I was willing to go, and I responded, ‘As far as you take me.’
Outside of WRR, small hubs of meetings, readings, and slams were emerging across the country. The year Tade Ipadeola won the NLNG Prize for his remarkable volume The Sahara Testament, I found myself in the crowd at Artmosphere, hosted by Servio Gbadamosi and Femi Morgan, shaking in my boots as Femi called me up to read my poem "An Ode to Amiri Baraka." Around the same time, Dami Ajayi had just released his career-defining chapbook Daybreak & Other Poems, a collection that explores desire through lush metaphors. Dami, with his enigmatic, carefree, and effortlessly humorous presence, struck me as someone who had stumbled into poetry by chance, as nothing about him seemed to fit the stereotypical "poet." Moments before taking the stage, he downed a bottle of beer, then proceeded to captivate the audience with his electrifying poems. I was invited to #BeBlessed a week later, hosted by Olumide Bisiriyu. I still remember my mother sewing me an Up-Nepa buba and sokoto for the poetry event—her son had finally found something he loved, even if it was something she didn’t fully understand but supported wholeheartedly.
In 2014, #BeBlessed Quarterly emerged as a crucial gathering place for young Nigerian poets, fueled by our collective passion for language—a fervor that consumed us entirely. VicAdex, who once walked halfway from Ibadan along the perilous Ibadan-Oyo highway to attend #BeBlessed the night before an important exam, exemplified the depths of our dedication. Such was our hunger for poetic communion. Every quarter, Mr. Olumide Bisiriyu's home became a sanctuary for around 30 young writers with nowhere else to stay after the poetry event. His generosity was a cornerstone of our burgeoning community. Evenings were spent in shy, earnest conversations in the dimly lit corners of the Bisiriyu compound. Mornings began with a humble feast: slices of bread, fried eggs, and tea. I can still vividly picture Mr. Olayemi Ayo, a fellow poet, sipping tea in front of the large television, sweat glistening on his brow as he later read a poem about his life in Lagos. The image is etched in my memory, a testament to the power of those moments. Lawal Kafayat Gold, Kemistree, Clementina, Oluwatosin Faith Kolawole, Bliss Akinyemi, and several other writers would take turns standing before Mr. Bisiriyu's TV, their voices bringing their poems to life in that makeshift arena of art. At a time when oral traditions and the study of poetry were declining—or by extension, the death of Nigerian education—writers were forming a community to uphold the tradition of language.
Around the same time, initiatives from Poets in Nigeria (PIN) began to flourish in Lagos, expanding the reach of our poetic renaissance. The convener, Mr. Eriata Oribhabor, became a pivotal supporter of Samson's visionary ideas. Under his guidance, PIN launched the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize, the PIN Food Poetry Prize, and several other smaller contests fostered in hubs across the country. Mr. Oribhabor's support extended beyond the conceptual; he provided crucial financial backing to young writers, nurturing talent with both resources and recognition.
At a time when oral traditions and the study of poetry were declining—or by extension, the death of Nigerian education—writers were forming a community to uphold the tradition of language.
In 2015, when Ademola Adefolami and Ewo Chidiebere won the PIN-Rose Residency program, I found myself in Ademola's room, engrossed in deep discussions about poetry. These moments of intense literary exchange became the crucibles in which our craft was refined. I had not learned of the African Poetry Book Fund then. The first time I heard about it, we were huddled in a small room at the Ayotoz Hotel, a dilapidated hotel that Samson’s “Feast of Words”—a poetry and literature festival hosted by WRR—could afford. Chika Jones mentioned that Kwame Dawes sent him an invite to submit to the box set. Imagine the bewilderment in the room. A quick Google search showed us what Kwame Dawes had done and was doing with Chris Abani on the continent. We sat in silence, listening to Chika and Ademola tell us the history of this new industry we were attempting to break into. I was a writer that year. That was all that mattered—being a writer. I hadn’t even thought that years later, I’d be writing this essay from a coffee shop in downtown Oakland. Looking back, I am struck by our fervent desire for growth, which I now realize was born out of the lack of formal institutions. Without established structures and the generosity of older writers willing to throw a few thousand around, we became our own mentors, critics, and champions. We were all we had, and in that scarcity, we found abundance.
Looking back, I am struck by our fervent desire for growth, which I now realize was born out of the lack of formal institutions. Without established structures and the generosity of older writers willing to throw a few thousand around, we became our own mentors, critics, and champions. We were all we had, and in that scarcity, we found abundance.
This grassroots movement, built on the foundations of gatherings like #BeBlessed, WRR, and initiatives like PIN, has played a crucial role in shaping the landscape of contemporary Nigerian poetry. It stands as a testament to the power of community, passion, and perseverance in nurturing literary talent and fostering cultural expression. It is important to mention that, as far as mentorship goes, Nigerian poets Kanyinsola Olorunnisola and Oyindamola Shoola started the SpringNG Mentorship program, which has successfully mentored hundreds of writers, some of whom are now in MFA programs and are award-winning poets.
In Rasak's poem "If You Come Tonight," published in African Writer in 2014, the poet captures this deeply rooted authenticity:
And if you come tonight
To preach to my deaf ears
For I have seen miles before birth
I have rendered my lines with mourning mothers
At unnamed tombs
I have earlier spewed words
Only cureless consolation I received
And if you come tonight
You won’t see me.
This verse underscores Rasak’s burden of inherited memory and his relentless confrontation with suffering, capturing the rawness of the Nigerian experience. I met Rasak for the first time at the Poetry and Palm Wine event hosted by the Arts and Theatre students of the University of Ibadan. That evening, I learned that my childhood friend, Uthman Adejumo, also wrote poetry. We’re drawing poetry from communal and personal experiences. We’re writing into and from the graffiti in our small lives. If the Nigerian poet sings of birds, it’s because pigeons are on electric cables outside their house. If we sing of fire, is the fire of the current political climate not hot enough? We’re closer to our metaphors, in language and in reality. Rasaq’s writing introduced me to language—and not just me; a host of Nigerian writers were studying Rasaq’s deviation from Victorian English into something that feels quite like a night in Iseyin.
We’re drawing poetry from communal and personal experiences. We’re writing into and from the graffiti in our small lives.
James Ademuyiwa and Gabriel Ayomide Festus were among the few emerging writers at that time whose language seemed like a gift from God: fresh, unpredictable, and brilliant. I also argue that the cycle of influence does not end—while writers before us took influences from writers like Pius Adesanmi, JV Verissimo, Lola Shoneyin, Toni Khan, Professor Gbemisola Adeoti, Harry Garuba, Professor Remi Raji, Uche Nduka, Ogaga Ifowodo among others—some of whom were members of Krazitivity, an earlier online community of writers—newer Nigerian writers take influences from the immediate generation before them. My earliest writing was heavily influenced by Gbenga Adesina, who won the 2016 Brunel Poetry Prize with Chekwube Danladi, D.M. Aderibigbe, Salawu Olajide, Shittu Fowora and Funsho Oris, who supplied some of my earliest edits. At the same time, I was writing with Olu Afolabi, Moyosore Orimoloye—one of the most brilliant writers I have ever worked with—Hauwa Shaffi Nuhu, Shade Mary-Ann, James Ademuyi, Mesioye Johnson, Ridwan Adelaja, and others. My first chapbook, For Boys Who Went, was published by Kukogho Samson's Authorpedia in 2016. It went on to become one of the most-read chapbooks at that time.
I cannot underestimate Krazitivity's role in the brilliance and vibrance of Nigerian literature as it migrated from the page to the screen. The online community was pivotal in developing Nigerian literature in the early 2000s. Founded as a Yahoo Group, it served as a virtual gathering place for Nigerian writers, poets, and literary enthusiasts within the country and in the diaspora. The platform facilitated discussions, critiques, and collaborations, fostering a sense of community among emerging and established authors. Notable members of Krazitivity included Nnorom Azuonye, a poet and publisher who later founded Sentinel Poetry, an online platform that provided a space for many Nigerian writers to publish their work. Toni Kan, a renowned Nigerian writer, also participated in the forum, engaging in literary discussions and networking with fellow authors. The forum was instrumental in connecting writers like Molara Wood, Afam Akeh, Pius Adesanmi, Victor Ehikhamenor, Obi Nwakanma, Esiaba Irobi, Ike Okonta, Wale Okediran, Chuma Nwokolo, Uche Peter Umez, Austin Njoku, and Abdul Mahmud, among others.
The understanding that an institution like the African Poetry Book Fund is bridging the gap between African poets, both at home and in the diaspora, and a global audience provided a glimpse into what you can be as a poet. But that felt so far-fetched. We didn't even know it was possible to live the life of a writer. It takes information for the world to open before you. My friends and I started researching, and our dreams started to build. They seemed unreachable, but at least the poet’s life is his dreams. We learned of D.M. Aderibigbe, whose collection was named a finalist for the Sillerman First Book Prize—another initiative of the African Poetry Book Fund—for his manuscript My Mother’s Song and Other Similar Songs I Learnt. The relative scarcity of continent-wide literary opportunities in Africa has played a significant role in shaping the trajectory of Nigerian poetry. Programs like the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, and the African Poetry Book Fund have been crucial in providing platforms for African poets. However, the limited number of such initiatives underscores the systemic challenges facing Nigerian and African poets seeking to reach a wider audience.
We didn't even know it was possible to live the life of a writer. It takes information for the world to open before you. My friends and I started researching, and our dreams started to build. They seemed unreachable, but at least the poet’s life is his dreams.
Because of how competitive it is for African poets—which may also be argued to be one of the reasons why we must be so good— I and six other poets—Agbaakin Jeremiah, Adebayo Kolawole, Pamilerin Jacobs, Michael Akuchie, Wale Ayinla, and Nome Emeka Patrick—started the UnSerious Fellowship, which awards four Nigerian poets annually with financial and editorial support. Some UnSerious Fellows have won the Evaristo Poetry Prize and the Sillerman Poetry Prize. The UnSerious Collective started as a writing group on WhatsApp, which then evolved into an editorial team that worked together to produce the most extensive anthology of Nigerian poetry—Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry, published by Animal Heart Press in 2020. The anthology also ushered in a text that contemplates the substance of Nigerian poetry—the range of language, the fluidity of its metaphors, the cloud of similes, and the barrage of issues the poems discuss. UnSerious Collective has influenced newer collectives and writing groups like the Frontier Collective, sprouting across the country. One of the most influential ways to emerge as a people is if we exist in groups.
The emergence of the WRR Facebook community led to TJ Dan’s now-defunct Praxis Magazine. The magazine published one of the most important queer chapbooks, Burnt Men, by Romeo Oriogun. Around that time, Wale Owoade founded Expound, and Wale Ayinla co-founded DwartzOnline. Agbowo Magazine, which I now lead as the editorial head, started as a collective of writers from the University of Ibadan. The magazine expanded into one of Africa’s most-read literary journals. Magazines and publications, riding on the wing of the global demand for Nigerian literature, now focus on publishing Nigerian voices. Nigerian NewsDirect Newspaper’s online poetry column solely dedicates itself to amplifying Nigerian voices. In a similar fashion, Poetry Sango-Ota—edited by Michael Akuchie and Jakky Bankong-Obi and chaired by Pamilerin Jacobs and me—reserves its monthly archive to platform Nigerian poets. Maybe why we enjoy what the world would imagine as a confident presence is that we’re creating these platforms for ourselves. During a project review with Pamilerin, I suggested we expand Poetry Sango-Ota to the Black diaspora, since we get submissions from the larger Black community anyway. But Pamilerin, whose mind is a wonder, argued that while the Black diaspora has several institutions, communities, magazines, residencies, and grants, Nigerians do not. And truly, we’re creating opportunities for ourselves, providing spaces for the next generation of writers, working and hoping that something like a miracle happens so we can preserve and archive the work we’re doing now.
In 2016, I created a WhatsApp group called "Growth is Coming," where we discussed poems for several days. We wrote and edited each other's work, preparing for a time like this. One of the participants, Toby Abiodun, became one of the most celebrated spoken word poets in Africa today. It seemed we had been doing all this wonderful work in our formative years, and the world was only catching up. But this was not the only writing group at that time. I was added to a small, closed group of writers that had Hauwa Shaffi, Daisy Odey, Salawu Olajide and Saddiq Dzukogi. We wrote, submitted, wrote and fought.
… we’re creating opportunities for ourselves, providing spaces for the next generation of writers, working and hoping that something like a miracle happens so we can preserve and archive the work we’re doing now.
There is always that person whose success helps redefine the movement. Although Gbenga Adesina had won the Brunel Prize a year prior, when Romeo Oriogun won the Brunel Prize in 2017, something shifted in our community. A year prior, the “Growth is Coming” community discussed the poems of Danez Smith, Sam Sax, Hanif Abdurraqib, Safia Elhillo, and Ladan Osman—whose workshop I attended at the Lagos International Poetry Festival in 2015—alongside other poets who seemed to form a collective of writers exploring the body in new, visceral ways. We jokingly called them the “Beotis Poets” that year (after the literary agency they were signed to). We studied their work closely, examining how they approached identity, trauma, and intimacy. Yet, it wasn’t until Romeo won the Brunel Prize that it began to feel like Nigerian poets could enjoy more audacity to be bolder, more daring, and precise in their poems because Romeo had broken a threshold.
Until 2017, many of us were writing from the outside in, dabbing our wounds with metaphors and tiptoeing around our intricate struggles. Romeo’s winning poems challenged this approach. They were fearless and unflinching,......."
I feel like joining the movement right away even as oldie.
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