FIVE HUNDRED NIGERIAN POETS: A Babel of Voices

FIVE HUNDRED NIGERIAN POETS: A Babel of Voices By Isaac Attah Ogezi Perhaps nothing puzzles critics of modern Nigerian literature like the unprecedented explosion of poets at the expense of prose-fiction writers and dramatists. Today, every Nigerian upstart who can pen a few witty lines can lay claim to his being infected by the poetic muse such that we are now named as the country of poets! In the words of Ben Obumselu, ‘At one point, there were more than 100 volumes of poems, which shows that Nigeria is a bird-nest of singing poets’. This is quite ironic when one considers the kind of phobia our secondary school students have for poetry as one of the genres of literature. It is an anathema to them; a hard, boring nut to crack. Unfortunately, the school authorities are not making things any better when they entrust poetry in the hands of graduates of English literature who have no passion for the subject. The story is more disheartening at the University level where our so-called undergraduate students of English dread poetry like phonetics in linguistics. Yet, today poetry occupies the centre-stage of our modern writings. What does this portend for the future Nigerian literature? Given such ugly scenario, one is not surprised at the gargantuan junk modern Nigerian writers churn out by the hour like our waste-work movies in the unholy name of poetry. Pseudo poetry! In Voices From the Fringe (edited by Harry Garuba, Malthouse, 1988), one of the earliest and most representative anthologies of this militarized generation, the woe-betide poetry enthusiast has to wade through about fifty pages of the entire anthology before he finds any poem that satisfies the criteria of a poem let alone a good poem. It is the same sad story Poets in Their Youths (edited by Uche Nduka and Osita Ike, Osiri Books, 1989) and A Volcano of Voices (edited by Steve Shaba, ANA, 1999). Perhaps, the only successful anthology of this generation is 25 Nigerian Poets (edited by Toyin Adewale, Ishael Reed Publishing Co., 2000). Indeed, nothing sums up the present misnomer in our literature like Nadime Gordimer’s forward to Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali’s first poetry collection, Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971): ‘Many people write poetry, but there are few poets in any generation, in any country’. To mark the forty-fifth Independence Anniversary of the man-child called Nigeria, the Makurdi-based Aboki Publishers launched the most representative anthology of modern Nigerian poets under the most ambitious title: Five Hundred Nigerian Poets (2005), Volume I, edited by a practicing poet, Dr. Jerry Agada, the new Vice National President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). The Aboki Publishers are a household name in our publishing industry, recognized earth-wide in their indefatigable efforts to promote the new voices of this generation. In an era where publishing is in a shambles, the Aboki publishers stand out as the most daring of all the publishers in Nigeria today. Thanks to them, the poet Moses Terhemba Tsenongu, would still have been strumming his kora unheard, in the department of English, Benue State University, Makurdi. This first volume of Five Hundred Nigerian Poets parades about two hundred and fifty Nigerian poets, both known and the totally obscure names. The themes are as diverse as there are many poets – overtly political themes, nature poems, feminism, a few love poems, etc. However, as representative as this anthology aspires, it is also a strong indictment on modern Nigerian poetry. In fact, the entire anthology reads like a babel of discordant, immature and imitative voices wailing in the wilderness! It is indeed a tragedy for Nigeria that out of the over two hundred poets anthology here, only eleven poets are promising. These are Jerry Agada (the editor-poet), Kevin Annechukwu Amoke, David Aondona Angya, Prince Chijioke Chinewubeze, B.M. Dzukogi, Isaac Attah Ogezi, Olu Oyawale, E.E. Sule, Moses Terhemba Tsenongu, Uche Peter Umex and Kabura Zakama. In ‘Ogbadibo’ (p.44), Jerry Agada achieves a remarkable poetic description of his homeland Ogbadibo, when he writes thus: Heavy rains Mark the season of hope Bumper harvests And prosperity. The terrain From head to toe Simmers with deep wounds And chronic sores Of cancerous gullies. Ravished and battered Ogbadibo lies prostrate Her loamy crust a deathtrap Deeply cut and chopped By the voracious rains. This poem conjures up in the mind of the reader J. P. Clark’s picturesque description of Ibadan in his short but powerful poem ‘Ibadan”. This kind of photographic description of scenery is a fast receding species in our modern poetry. On page 92, Kevin Anenechukwu Amoke distinguishes himself with his beautiful poem ‘What’, the endless philosophical question of existence. For a full appreciation of the poem, it is pertinent to reproduce the entire poem here: What hand sustains this star That it never sinks? What hand? And the eye of this evening Is already faint. A wasted breed, But this strand, full of desire, Of zeal To turn its back On this evening And sling its foot across the heart Of the night. High up the stair of the heavens It must lean on frames of dews Palming its monocle, ready for the hand. Why does the star not sink? What hand… Unlike most poets of this generation, Amoke in the above poem shows us how literarily conscious he is as a poet and a voracious reader of other poets. For in this single poem, we hear echoes of William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’, Christopher Okigbo’s ‘The Stars Have Departed’ and the great William Shakespeare. For how well would an aspiring poet write without reading other great poets? Inarguably, the wittiest poem in the entire volume is David Aondona Angya’s ‘Broken Marriages’ (pp. 102-103). In spite of the child-persona’s crackling wit, the tone of tragedy is remarkably sustained. It runs as follows: A broken marriage is not only the painful cleavage between the Adam and Eve of my parentage it is also an excruciating rape against my emotional growth. A broken marriage is not only the absence of mummy’s full rations it is also the presence of another Eve with half rations. A broken marriage is not only the retrenchment of mine advocate before daddy it is also the employment of mine prosecutor before daddy. A broken marriage not only punishes culprits it also makes a scapegoat of me. The beauty of this poem obviously lies in the unusual concordance between the theme and the poetic craft. The didactic theme of broken marriages is superbly matched with mature artistry, thus saving it from the message-message poems of this generation. Happily enough, the sense of the comic in the poet does not belie the note of tragedy of all broken marriages. Another poem that succeeds so well in apt description of a situation apart from Jerry Agada’s ‘Ogbadibo’ (p.44) is Uche Peter Umez’s ‘Child Soldiers’ (p.449). In this poem, the poet is more concerned in probing deep into the complex psychology of a child-soldier rather than merely listing a catalogue of woes that befalls a child soldier. In the hands of a less successful poet, this poem would read like a sermon delivered from the pulpit. Fortunately, to Umez, poetry is beyond petty preachments but language, mystic language that nourishes the mind of the reader. A full reproduction of this beautiful poem will convince the reader of its maturity. The sky sprawls hazy in the harmattan sun A swath of dust brooks In the chill air In the ghost of a Community school Some rawboned boys Quaint machine guns by their side Puff at long strips of marijuana. Morose He sits on a stump Fingering the riffle Like a chaplet His eyes shards of glass His puerile mouth taut in a snarl Like a lion’s cub …. This night when the moon hatches Shadows and silhouettes He and the rebels The brittle village will raid. Ironically, this short, psychological description of the child soldiers speaks volumes of the negative effect of war on children than several essay-like poems of apprentice poets combined. It is a rare success in our modern poetry. Undoubtedly, the most pervasive theme of this anthology and indeed this generation, is the theme of cynicism, political ineptitude and disillusionment of a generation lost and adrift. However, no single poem captures this oppressive air of despondency and disenchantment with reasonably artistic merit like Kabura Zakama’s ‘My Generation’ (p. 477). Hear him ululate aloud: Here I am denuded of all plumage In the middle of my peak virility, A few years stolen by mean dreams, A few years to tease my fate: Of my generation I am the crystal image, Sapped skeletons lugging tattered hopes. We are compelled to survive, never to thrive, In order to maintain their fat selves, And preserve even the crumbs of our cake For their kids and the brats after their kind: Of my generation we are the pampered victims, Sapped skeletons watched by insatiate vultures. Born equal but bred to poor and polite, We drown in committees and commissions And when we die, as we surely must die, We are denied graves even at dumping sites: Of my generation we are the clear picture Sapped skeletons bound by barren dreams. Probably, the most mature and vibrant voice in this Babel of voices in the wilderness is, no doubt, Moses Terhemba Tsenongu. After several years of disciplined tutelage under the grandmaster of modern African poetry, Niyi Osundare, and with the publication of his two not-too-successful collections of poetry (Soliloquies and If I Kill God and Other Poems), Tsenongu is eventually finding his resilient voice as a poet. His recent poetry resonates with such evocative power and urgency that are reminiscent of the great poetry of Leopold Senghor, Dennis Brutus, David Diop, Christopher Okigbo and Niyi Osundare. In his lewd but sweet poem ‘ To Kristina’ (p. 419), Tsenongu pleads passionately to Kristina thus: When I finally glide into your globe Where I’ve been seeking admittance Since I discovered the mints of treasure stowed there And the mines of pleasure therein stored; When I finally land home in you – R world, please do not kill me with ecstasy; Just guide me gently to the right places Like you did when I havened in Hamburge. After a careful second reading, one discovers with delight that the above poem is more than a mere amorous love poem like Brutus’ ‘ A troubadour I traverse’ but a passionate plea, nay, invocation for inspiration from the creative Muse personified in Kristina. To Tsenongu, Kristina is to him what goddess Idoto was to Okigbo – a source of inspiration. In the first poem ‘Idoto’ in his volume Heavens-gate, Okigbo (who regards himself as the reincarnation of his grandfather) chants to goddess Idoto in the following evocative lines: Before you, mother Idoto, naked I stand, before your watery presence, a prodigal, leaning on an oilbean; lost in your legend… under your power wait I on barefoot, Watchman for the watchword at HEAVENSGATE Out of the depths my cry give ear and hearken. Tsenongu belongs to the school of thought in poetry that believes that poetry is not all about writing privatist and arch-obscurantist lines of the defunct Ibadan school, only decipherable to the mystic creators and their deluded highbrow critics and readers, who see poetry as a message in the bottle; a difficult puzzle too sublime for the common man in the street. No, he believes fervently that poetry can still be accessible to the masses like Ojaide’s without robbing it of the necessary finery. After all, what is the primary duty of the poet to his society? According to the Norwegian poet-playwright, Henrik Ibsen, ‘The duty of the poet is to make us see’ with breathing images. Little wonder then that Tsenongu’s poetry is infused with vivid images and symbols that make the readers see better. In the first stanza of his poem ‘I See a New Horizon’ (p. 422), Tsenongu proves himself a classic imagist of the likes of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Niyi Osundare when he writes : I see a new horizon beckoning onto me I see a new sun splashing its rays on my night And a flower responding to a suns’ sperms [sic] And a bee responding to a flower’s flavour. No doubt, Tsenongu’s poetry is indeed simple, yes, but a sophisticated simplicity of the kind that can disarm non-poetry lovers of any misgivings they may have against poetry like Plato. Apart from the few poets discussed briefly above, most of the poems in the anthology read like the entries in a beginners’ class of poetry in our secondary schools, what with the poor usage of language by most of the poets. Poetry from time immemorial is regarded as the most expressive form of any language. It is only poets that can make a language grow because of the resources at their disposal. Shakespeare helped the English of the Elizabethan times grow with beautiful expressions such as ‘the mind’s eye’, ‘to be, or not to be’, ‘a sea of troubles’, ‘there’s the rub’ and several original expressions that enriched the English language that we speak today. Unfortunately, the English of most of the poets in this anthology is lamentably bad and unpoetic. It is heart-rending to see unpardonable grammatical errors such as ‘Of the aches/ That comes with pain’ (p. 3), ‘which were been done’ (p. 109), ‘If thou have’ (p. 166), ‘from time in memorial’ (p. 330), ‘pump and pageantry’ (p. 331), ‘post humus awards’ (p. 351), ‘today your enemies bath with’ (p.394), ‘comrades awaiting breathe’ (p. 403), ‘we stood agaped’ (p. 403), ‘if the ancestors has choose’ (p. 427), ‘has choosen’ (p. 427), ‘uniform men’ (p. 428), ‘comes the screeching cars…’(p.428), ‘I will do my possible best’ (p. 457), ‘that blows pass’(p. 469), ‘I have never know’ (p. 470), ‘who dares distil water’ (p. 471). There are also a few typographical errors which the editor allowed to go to press, unedited, to wit: ‘They very strangeness’ (p. 41), ‘The lied’ (p. 52), etc. Worse still, most of the poems suffer from loose structure owing to the weak control of language by the poets. In consequence, most of the poems are unnecessarily long, windy and incoherent. The economy of language as a distinct feature of poetry is lacking in most of the poems. Unfortunately, the few big names such as Maria Ajima and Akachi Adimorah-Ezeigbo are better prose writers with poetry as their Achilles’ heels! Thus, their poetry cannot be discharged and acquitted of the charges levelled against most of the immature poets in this anthology. Waste work to use Chimwezu’s favourite expression, such as Elizabeth Adebimpe’s ‘Adam and Eve: This Place we Make’ (p. 18), Globa O. Dhikrullah’s ‘A Pentent’s Prayer’ (p. 165), Gaius E. Okwezuzu’s ‘You Bolted out of Home’ (p. 328) and Samuel Igbaroola Oluseye’s ‘A Song of Praise’ (p. 337) are incurably bad and deserve to be weeded out ab initio. The only snag to the anthology’s claim to be the most definitive anthology of modern Nigerian poetry is the conspicuous absence of important poets of this generation such as Remi Raji, Promise Okwkwe, Ogaga Ofowodo, Maik Nwosu, Angela Nwosu, Uche Nduka, Nduka Otiono, Chika Unigwe, Obiwu, Emman Shehu, Pius Adesanmi, Okey Ndibe, Olu Oguibe, Toni Kan, Helon Habila, Uzor Mazim Uzoatu, Nike Adesuyi, Sola Osofisan, Chiedu Ezeanah, Amu Nnadi, Victoria Kankara, Obu Udeozo, Ahmed Maiwada, Omale Allen Abdul-Jabbar, Nengi Josef, Unoma Azuah, Toyin Adewale-Gabriel, Urdeen Sylvester, Maryam Ali and a host of many others. One does hope that in the next volume, these stars in our literary firmament shall be given enough orbits to twinkle. In conclusion, Five Hundred Nigerian Poets, Volume I, despite the lapses dwelled on in the foregoing, is a most ambitious anthology of modern Nigerian poetry and a milestone in the history of the development of our literature. The Aboki publishers and the editor, Dr. Jerry Agada, deserve high commendation for showcasing these fresh voices to the world. In the whole of Africa, save for Wole Soyinka’s Poems from Black Africa, this anthology has no rival and thus can lay claim to be the most definitive and expressive anthology of Nigerian poetry writers and authors across the country. It is indeed a must read for all poetry lovers wearied of reading stale English and American poetry.

A DANCE IN THE NIGHT (A play for children) Accused of afflicting her younger brothers with witchcraft, 13-year-old Oyenche is sent to a deliverance home where she finds the place is a torture-chamber. In a bid to escape from the home, Oyenche and the other accused children in the home fall into the hands of Biggy, the kingpin of a dreaded kidnap ring. Will she come out of these travails victorious? These and many more questions are answered in Mr. Ogezi’s new play for children. A Dance in the Night mirrors the contemporary issues of child abuse in society under the guise of witchcraft exorcism and child kidnapping. It seeks to create more public awareness about these vices and bring to the fore the new dimension the oppression of children has assumed in the cruel and bewildered world of adults. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Isaac Attah Ogezi is a legal practitioner, poet, playwright, short story writer and literary essayist. He is published in several national and international anthologies, online journals and dailies. His plays and short stories have won him numerous literary awards including ANA/Esiaba Irobi Prize for Drama for three record times, AWF/Zulu Sofola Award for Drama 2009, CHD/Ford Foundation Award for Creative Writing 2010, SONTA/Olu Obafemi Prize for Playwriting 2016, amongst others. In 2014, he was nominated for both the Soyinka Prize for African Literature and NLNG Prize for Literature for his Under a Darkling Sky. In the same year, his short story collection¸ The Threshing Floor, was published by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) under its imprint, Nigerian Writers Series (NWS). A fellow of UNPFA/Nollywood Scriptwriting and British Council Radiophonics programmes, he currently practises law in New Karu, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. His published plays include: Waiting for Savon (2009), Casket of Her Dreams (2010),Under a Darkling Sky (2012), Embrace of a Leper (2013) and This Side of the Dead (2018).

Mr. Ogezi’s new play examines the fears, struggles and triumphs of the downtrodden in a class-restive society. With deft utilization of stage resources and verisimilitude, humanity is depicted with telling imaginative empathy in a ghoulish dramatization that embeds reality in fiction. This Side of the Dead mirrors the class tensions inherent in a third-world country and their attendant consequences. It is about the lives of two brothers caught in the vortex of a soulless world. Michael, an expelled final-year law student on asylum at his elder brother’s construction site home, unwittingly manages to attract love from Susan, an American-born daughter of a Nigerian Cabinet Minister. Unfortunately, his ambivalence to this love does not suffice in stopping the huge price which the poor must pay for crashing the party of the rich and the powerful.

Jallo, Abba, and Egwuda: Three New Exciting Voices in Nigerian Drama

By Isaac Attah Ogezi Nigerian literature in the 21st century could be said to be at its golden age if proliferation of texts is the sole criterion to go by. However, the only genre that lags behind in this age of proliferation of literary production is inarguably drama. This lacklustre state of the Nigeria’s world of the stage prompted Osofisan, a seasoned playwright and drama scholar, to lament thus: ‘Plays and playwrights are too obviously in short supply…twwdci phvbkm Whereas prose fiction shows a more or less robust growth, and poems are proliferating like water hyacinths, plays do not seem to inspire an equal devotion or enthusiasm among our writers. Mention Ahmed Yerima, Stella Oyedepo, Oguntokun, Julie Okoh, ChimaUtoh, and Irene Salami, and you exhaust the list.’ One cannot agree less with that assertion. This paucity of plays and playwrights could be attributed to many factors, which do not form the raison d’etre of this discourse. Unfortunately, the few plays available are of indifferent, if not mediocre, quality. It is salutary that despite this vegetable state of modern Nigerian drama, there are a few negligible exciting voices. Zainabu Jallo, Friday John Abba and EmekaEgwuda are obviously the silver linings behind this apparently gloomy cloud. In this work, the present writer shall examine the plays of each of these playwrights which he considers his or her best and the stagecraft deployed therein to warrant their induction into this hall of fame. The three plays are: Jallo’sOnions Make us Cry, Abba’sAlekwu Night Dance andEgwuda’s Esoteric Dialogue. Jallo’sfascinating and original play, Onions Make us Cry, tells the story of a 36-year-old Malinda, a patient of post-traumatic stress disorder who is standing trial for the murder of her husband. Through the adroit use of Ibsenian retrospective technique, the reader gets to know the accumulation of stress which precipitated the homicide. Perhaps what makes Onions Make us Cry captivating is the astonishingly blissful marriage of form and content in a most satisfying manner. The heroine Malinda who is being investigated for a catatonic schizophrenia is invested with the unique language that is in consonance with her traumatic state, a hybrid of the poetic and the absurd like Professor in Soyinka’s The Road. In narrating how she met her husband DJ, Malinda says on page 37: ‘If I am asked, “Who really are you Malinda?” I should like to say, “I am what I want to be.” Can’t be too sure now … see? Fate’s arrows got me wounded badly. Shame. In Club Havana, we met between silly giggles and a few drinks; the stage was set.’ After marriage, Malinda watches ‘DJ’s venom spread faster’ (p. 3) than she could control. Despite this absence of joy in the family, exacerbated, no doubt, by the theatrics of politics and ‘campaign strains’ (p. 37), the world only saw the glistening shell while she felt like ‘the bane of being a puppet on a falling string. I often was stone’. It is in this agitated and schizophrenic mind that she dreaded he was going to kill her: ‘He wasn’t DJ any more. His eyes told me so. He’d been completely possessed. The goblin who got his soul was the worst type. ’ (p. 38) Onions Make us Cry is not only about Jallo’s central character Malinda, but also about Lola Gambari, the clinical psychologist attending to the former who ironically needs help in a pure case of the physician being the patient in a reversal of roles. Concerning psycho talk, Malinda tells Lola: ‘You need one yourself you know’ (p. 30). The undercurrent of violence against women permeates through the work in a rather subtle, albeit devastating manner. Married for the second time to Ali, Lola shows her patient Malinda a handful of hair rooted out by her husband: ‘Rooted them out last day I was here. It gave me a wild migraine. I had to call in sick.’ (p. 39) Touched, the patient Malinda playing the role of a physician now prescribes: ‘How I detest the psycho talk… You need one yourself You know… I know, because I was you… Hmm, my panoramic view tells me the melodrama will swallow you up … like Jonah and the mysterious whale … not like you aren’t aware. You know what to do Lola Gambari… you could be smarter than me.’ (p. 30) Jallo in this work seems to be saying that most women’s psychological trauma is male-induced like Malinda’s, Lola’s and the other female inmate’s in the next room to Malinda’s. As the writer aptly put it in the mouth of her character Malinda: ‘Ellen is the name of the lady who stays in the next room, right? [Lola nods] Well, she keeps yelling into my sleep at someone called Joe, who lured her into believing they both will take on the roles of man and wife. On her finger, he put a diamond ring, in her head, crystal hopes. He is married to another… She talks like Joe is sitting there with her. When she begins to scream, I guess it’s Zipporah – you know, the other lady Joe ran off with – she sees!’ (p. 17) Using the canvas of the stage, Jallo paints a universal world where the border between sanity and insanity is blurred. Malinda’s last statement in Situation Four sums up the pathetic state of humanity squirming in the muck of insanity: ‘Well, everyone is a patient of something!’ (p. 33). She tells her clinical psychologist Lola, ‘You’d need to check yourself in here as well Lola Gambari’ (p. 21). This maze of a world that the entire humanity helplessly finds itself, ‘stuck in a situation’ (p. 17) that is beyond it, that it does not want to be in, ‘jumbled labyrinth. An uncanny invisible ensemble plays’ (p. 44) like the two tramps waiting for a phantom being in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. In this slim play, Jallo has shown that feminism can still be aesthetically and subtly championed without recourse to the overt propaganda tracts that spew violence against women on every page. In delving into the minds of her characters, she has been able to go beyond mere story-telling into the realm of psychology that the reader or viewer might think that she is a trained clinical psychologist herself like her character Lola. Arguably,the only Nigerian playwright who has attempted a similar hybrid of the theatre and psychology apart from Jallo is RasheedGbadamosi in his Behold, my Redeemer. The modern Nigerian theatre does not only need new names but also experimental, avant-garde voices like Jallo that will boot awake the apparently comatose stage from the tiny corners of our ivory towers. On the other hand, Abba’s crime play, Alekwu Night Dance, stands out from many new Nigerian plays for its successful blend of a suspenseful plot, set in motion by a murder,and the role of the Alekwu myth in the punishment of such desecrations. Set in the rustic Idoma village of O’lano, Alekwy Night Dance tells the story of a young Iganya, ravished and brutally murdered.Oyilo, blood-splattered, is discovered by three men holding a dagger with the woman’s lifeless body lying in the pool of her blood beneath him. Circumstantially, the villagers are agreed that he is the culprit but Oche, the village head, refuses to be drawn into the general conclusion and advises caution. Like OvonramweninRotimi’sOvonramwenNogbaisi, Oche finds himself in a great dilemma when his people want him to act instead of soliciting for patience: ‘I have not gone through this kind of experience before now. It never even crossed my mind that a situation like the one I face today could come near me. Ochanya, this is hard. I have consulted with Alekwu through Obialekwu and what they have asked for is patience. But how can I remain patient when I am under pressure from my people to act?’ (pp. 40-41) The question is who killed Iganya? Is it Oyilo who is seemingly caught red-handed or who? This gives rise to conspiracy theories culminating in the angry youth who feel Oche and Oyilo are in collusion and pounce on the duo, killing them in a most heinous manner. Unfortunately, they have reckoned without the wrath of Alekwu. The seeming return of peace to Ol’ano after the gruesome murder of Oyilo and Oche by the mob is however short-lived as one mysterious catastrophe follows hot upon the heels of another in the village – flooding, snake-bites, epidemics and many others. To expiate this calamity, fingers are pointed at one another resulting in a pandemonium of uncontrolled rage and reprisals before Obialekwu steps in to reveal rather belatedly and most astoundingly the culprit behind Iganya’s murder. In this breathtakingly suspenseful tragedy, Abba espouses the Idoma world-views, mores and values only equalled by SamshudeenAmali’s bilingual plays. He has done to the Idoma race what older compatriots such as Achebe, Soyinka, Rotimi and Amali have done to their ethnic groups in their works. The pre-colonial Idoma society is steeped in superstitions and revers the place of the spirits of the dead and Alekwu on the course of the events of the living. The much-dreaded Alekwu is reputed to be imbued with the ability to recompense all evil. As the playwright put it in the mouth of the character Ad’Onyilo, thus: ‘Alekwu acts at his time. When the woman who slept with the other man thought that nothing would happen, didn’t all her children die? Didn’t her husband who knew about it without doing anything die of a mysterious ailment? Didn’t she lose her head before eventually joining the others? Abutu, Alekwu acts decisively.’ (p. 105). One could say that the playwright seems to believe in the cause-effect intervention of Alekwu himself as he afflicts Enokela who killedIganya with madness. Enenche and Abah, the two children of Ochai who sends Enokela to dishonor Iganya ‘were both smitten by snakes in their house but at about the same moment’ (p. 112). Even the flood that caused untold destruction to houses and crops is attributed to the wrath of Alekwu over the wanton shedding of blood in Ol’ano. Inalegwu laments: ‘The land is still under a curse; the spirits are still not at peace with us. It is not normal for the rain to uncover graves and let out decomposed and decomposing bodies. In their anger, the spirits left Ol’ano littered with filth and bodies and death.’ (p. 88) In fact, the belief in Alekwu is so pervasive in this play such that the playwright resorts to it via the intervention of the chief priest of Alekwu, Obialekwu, in resolving the conflict in the play in a sort of deus ex machina. What prompts Ochai to let out a loud cry and confess his involvement in the death of Iganya is as a result of the piercing eyes of Obialekwu which appear to strip him naked: ‘Enter Obialekwu. Elders make way for Obialekwu who stops beside Ochai… Obialekwu remains silent not taking his eyes off Ochai’ (pp. 113 – 114). One wonders whether the belated intervention of Alekwu is for reasons of dramaturgy or a sharp criticism of the Alewku itself or a misconception of the Alekwu myth as a whole by the playwright? According to Oche: ‘Alekwu is angry over the reprisals going on. I have spoken with Obialekwu and I know that Alekwu has forbidden him from coming to this Council’ (p. 41). It is easy to surmise that either the playwright, as an anti-god proponent like Euripides in his early works, deliberately intended to portray Alekwu as being too slow and weak and impervious to the plight of his worshippers or in a bid to score a theatrical point, he misinterpreted the Alekwu myth, for it is indeedamazing that it takes Alekwu to intervene only when Ol’ano is at the brink of extermination. Such a god or spirits of the dead deserve to be spurned and not venerated. The foregoing notwithstanding, Abba’s timeless central theme of appearances versus reality is not affected in any way by such cultural anomaly. For a debutant playwright, he has written a good play even though at the expense of his people and in consequence has achieved the opposite of what he sought to do by turning the culture of his people on its head. Egwuda’s verse play, Esoteric Dialogue, is quite different from the two previous plays. This is because of its bold experimentation with dramatic language and form. Esoteric Dialogue is a versified parable for the stage about the courage of one man who stands firm and alone despite the gale of corruption and greed that his country is enmeshed in. Set in a modern-day Nigeria, the play revolves around an iconic character called Prof. S.B. Lanka who is, according to his wife Rebecca, possessed by the demon of poetry that ‘he prefers to achieve his rhyme/At the expense of an important answer’ (p. 23). This enigma of a character can better be summed up by what Lady Ann in the end of the play says about him: ‘An uncommon human being … A man who refused to be corrupted, A man who – in the face of political intrigues And mudslinging – holds firm to his genuine Principle and good conscience for the service Of his country and humanity in entirety …’ (p. 97). Owing to the industrial action embarked by the universities nation-wide, Prof. Lanka becomes a ‘self-employed intellectual’ (p. 16) and militant poet who is often taunted by his wife for his inability to make ends meet. At the opening scene, Rebecca accuses him for failing in his responsibility as a husband: ‘What man is that that calls himself a husband/Who cannot take responsibility for his wife?’ (p. 14). However, when it appears the economic situation of the Lankas will be improved, thanks to the American visa lottery that the wife wins, Prof. refuses to jubilate with her because, ‘To live in another man’s paradise/And be seen as a parasite’ (p.35) is not his idea of living. Perhaps the turning-point in the Lankas’ lives is the appointment into the federal Cabinet of Prof. as Chairman of Oil Revenues Board. At first, he sees it as a Greek gift and refuses stoutly the appointment, ‘No, I cannot serve this government’ (p.50). It takes the astuteness of his wife who convenes an emergency meeting of both families to bear upon him to change his mind, as ‘They can’t afford to miss America and miss a/Government appointment for principle’s sake’ (p.50). For a man ‘known for his extreme radicalism’ (p. 49), the reader is not surprised that Prof. finds himself a misfit among his new colleagues in the government. He refuses to dole out public money to a lady, Julie, sent to him from Senator Amdou, and is adamant about okaying a proposal by his friend Barrister Krombul on the ground that it ‘is highly inflated’ (p.58). The last straw is when he sits upon a presidential order by refusing to approve funds for the President’s re-election. He is arrested on trumped-up charges of misappropriation of public funds worth thirty-four billion naira and taking a bribe from a contractor. The panel of questionable personalities set up to probe him has reckoned without the irate students and area boys who see Prof. as a national hero. In the end, Prof. is mob-vindicated and decorated with several honoursand his statute erected as ‘a martyr of justice’ (p. 93). What at first glance is remarkably original about this dark comedy is the intrepid technical experiment with free verse and rhyming couplets at the same time. While the other characters speak in free verse, Prof. Lanka, the extreme radical and militant poet, speaks in rhymes and couplets as a mark of his intellectual profundity. This has unfortunately in a few instances posed as a great setback thereby distorting the free flow of Prof.’s thoughts. For example, while in his solitary cell, Prof. says rather to himself: ‘O Prof, poor soul, your memory is full. O Muse, what shall I say to you; it’s full To the brim. Suffer me not at all; kiss Not my ears with your whispering lips. Peace Is far from me.Give me today enough sorrow, Abundance of it that sustains tomorrow –’ (p.71) Or consider the forced rhyming in the following couplets: ‘Here they come! Are you with your manacle? Have my hands and bind me. O what a spectacle!’ (p. 69) ‘As you can see, higher in the ladder of his destiny I receive with joy this priceless prize. O mutiny!’ (p. 101) Prof.’s thoughts are rather disjointed and pedantic, because of the insistence on using rhyming couplets. This will also pose as a great challenge to the actor playing the part of the Prof. owing to the unnaturalness of the rhymed poetry, quite unlike Moliere’s free-flowing The Misanthrope. More worrisome, of course, are instances where the end-lines do not rhyme properly such as: ‘Each time you nag and scold me like a tart In spite of your little understanding, I deserve a pat’ (p. 15) ‘To live in another man’s paradise And be seen as a parasite’ (p. 35) ‘The Scripture: “What God has joined together, Let no man, let not America - put asunder’ (p. 37) ‘Children, as you’re at the threshold of menopause To wean a child now, you’ll look like a wet-nurse’ (p. 42) ‘An unfortunate adulterer: “Daddy! Daddy! I av pooh-pooh.” Would I, before my friends, be nobler than a nincompoop?’ (p. 43) Contrastingly, the free verse Prof. adopts in his prison poem on pages 98-99 is more eloquent than his rhyming-couplet speeches in the play. It is in this audacious experiment with dramatic language, thence lie the few lapses in the work. The playwright, carried away by his intention of making the play intellectually appealing as possible,falls victim of using language that verges on the bombastic such as ‘the success of every profession is by its material transmutation’ (p. 22), ‘Should be in the hospital as a patient of intellectual megalomania’ (p. 38), ‘America’s consolidating her world-powerism by this philately of humans…’ (p. 39), and ‘… will absolve it of any dubiety’ (p. 80). The use of quatrains in the song rendered by the chorus in the Epilogue is marred by archaic words like ‘tarry’ and ‘by and by’ and fourth-line end-rhymes such as ‘expos’d’, ‘depos’ed’, ‘repos’d’, , ‘compos’d’,‘oppos’d’ and ‘impos’d’. Like most works with intellectual and messianic missions, Esoteric Dialogue is overtly didactic and Marxist thereby reducing the characters to mere caricatures bereft of verisimilitude. Given the impressive quality of the above plays, there is surely a pinprick of optimism that this Cinderella of Nigerian literature can still have her beauty revamped, her plumage pilfered by other genres rightly restored to her. Jallo, the avant-garde, and arguably the most active, theatre practitioner of the trio, has gone ahead to publish a new play, Holy Night, since the release of her Onions Make us Cry in 2011. The Slave and the Crown and Haunted by Yesterday had preceded Egwuda’s Esoteric Dialogue, first published in 2005, though it is yet to have a successor. In the case of Abba, the new entrant into this fast-depleting pantheon of playwrights, one does hope that his Alekwu Night Dance is not a flash in the pan. These new names in drama, if sustained and encouraged, show that it is too early yet in the morning to strum an elegy for the Nigerian stage.

The Triumph of the Girl-Child in Bobi's Bongel

In as much as the proponents of the pure school of art will pontificate art for art’s sake, literature cannot be wholesomely divorced from commitment. Achebe could not have put it more aptly when he stated that ‘The whole pattern of life demanded that one should protest, that you should put in a word for your history, your traditions, your religion, and so on.’ Consequently, it is nearly impossible for a woman writer who has had a firsthand experience of sexual inequalities in her sexist community not to try and ‘put in a word’ for her sex. The emergence of feminism, a protest movement in literature and art, is geared towards redressing apparent anomalies and wrongs against the disadvantaged woman in society. In Nigeria, Flora Nwapa, the first woman novelist, blazed the trail with her 1966 novel, Efuru, followed by Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen, Ifeoma Okoye’s Behind the Clouds and Men without Ears, Zaynab Alkali’s The Stillborn, Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus¸ to mention but the most prominent. It is regrettable that after almost six decades since the publication of Nwapa’s Efuru, it is not yet Uhuru for the plight of women in a male-dominated world. The Jahiliyyah-like condition of the woman, despite the appreciable progress made over the years, Nirvana cannot be said to be attained, paving the way for the cries of aluta continua to still rend the air from the feminists’ camp. Maryam Bobi’s recent novella, Bongel, is a timely contribution to this hue and cry. Set in the contemporary, cell-phone era, Bongel revolves around the title central character, Bongel, a Fulani medical student at the El-Khamar School of Medical Science. Through the sly handiwork of her course-mate friend and room-mate, Kauthar, a romantic relationship is engineered with the latter’s elder brother Abdul, studying in the UK. Unfortunately, Bongel has reckoned without her sordid past. Given out in marriage without her consent by her despotic father at the tender age of twelve to the rich Alh. Tanko, a man old enough to be her father, she had a stillbirth which she was blamed for killing the child. This precipitated her divorce and ironically the golden opportunity to resume her truncated education. The plot, rendered in a limpid, pacy and confident language, interspersed with snippets of flashbacks, Bobi can be said to have arrived almost made as a writer, to borrow Achebe’s excited welcome of Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. For a debutant novelist, her prose reads like that of an experienced writer’s at the top of the tree. The reader cannot resist such luscious expressions: ‘… she kept to the shoulder of the tarred road’ (p. ix), ‘Images flew around in her mind. She would love to arrange them orderly, to create a coherent panorama’ (p. 10), ‘… she feared that she was beginning to veer away from virtue’ (p. 14), ‘… the rotten ones who perfume themselves in lies and deceits’ (p. 61) and ‘Bongel felt washed back to land by the waves. The storm had calmed’ (p. 93). Good expressions like the above helped to accentuate the writer’s themes most poignantly and succinctly. It is trite that literature cannot effect revolutionary changes like politics, nor can it shoot a gun, but there is no gainsaying the fact that a well-executed piece of work can pack quite a punch on the face of a nihilistic and sexist world. Through the effective use of apt imageries, the reader is made to empathize, or better still, feel vicariously Bongel’s near-death experience when her ancient husband, Alh. Tanko, the man with ‘kola nut-stained teeth’ (p. 72), rapes her in the name of consummating the marriage with his child-bride: “… he became so furious he took the wrapper off her body and pinned her on the bed. Bongel felt her executioner grunting like a pig, breathing hot tepid air down her face, and burying her in an envelope of arid smells. The tearing pain that hit her brain was worse than any pain she had ever felt in her life … another volley pain [sic] struck her, going off like a giant bell. She wanted to hold her head together for fear it might explode but found she was suddenly too weak to even move her hands. Her pelvis, abdomen and thigh muscles were burning and pulsating. At that moment, rational thoughts became impossible for her. She could not recall anything at all …’ (p. 68). The impact of the above soul-stirring description coupled with other images-laden episodes in the work is worth more than several girl-child legislations which are more often than not obeyed in the breach than in their observance. Undoubtedly, Bobi is not a writer sold on the oft-regurgitated theory of art for art’s sake. She is a writer brimming with a catalogue of messages; a writer of commitment. In the first place, what African writer is not? According to Achebe: ‘I believe that it is impossible to write anything in Africa without some kind of commitment, some kind of message, some kind of protest … So commitment is nothing new… In fact, I should say that all of our writers, whether they’re aware of it or not are committed writers.’ However, commitment is not without its snags especially when not skilfully handled. Any wonder then that most Marxist or feminist works of art are unreadable propaganda tracts? This is perhaps the major lapse in Bobi’s Bongel, thus reducing the work to a compendium of societal ills against women - child marriages, the deprivation of the girl-child education, vesico vaginal fistula (VVF), oppression of women in marriage, favoritism of the male child over his female counterpart, the list is inexhaustive. Because of the desperate bid to cram too many themes into the work, the love story between the heroine Bongel and Abdul is slight, usurped by preachy flashbacks on women’s victimization in a patriarchal society such that even the least Suyayya novel from Kano Hausa Market Literature is more engrossing with plot complications than Bongel. Alas, in literature we estrange our readers with so-called serious themes at the expense of spellbinding plots while romance and thriller writers hold their breaths on the edge with masterful storylines, leaving us with no choice but to embrace our comfort-zone alibi that people are no longer reading. In consequence, the character of Bongel is not developed satisfactorily. In spite of her ugly past, it is expected that she will be wiser and more wary in subsequent relationships, but no, she is not created to learn from her past experiences. Just like Nora’s famous shutting of the door on her marriage in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House resounded positively across the globe, Bongel’s spirited effort to negotiate a truce with Abdul, who is not man enough for her, in the end of the book is a big fatal blow on the feminist posture of the work. Most likely the writer has allowed the benign feminism in Alkali’s The Stillborn to negatively influence her to the point of cheapening her central character. In the older writer’s work, Li’s relationship with Farouk is that of a valid marriage which has birthed an issue but the same cannot be said of Bongel’s starry-eyed romance with Abdul. Again, one of the perennial weaknesses of most feminist works by women writers is the pathological obsession with male stereotyping. Male characters never live in their works. For example, Abdul, Alh. Tanko and Bongel’s father are all cardboard, stock characters not imbued with flesh and blood or any redeeming features by their gender-partial creator. If anything, this robs the work of depth, verisimilitude, subtleties and great suggestive meanings. One of the first lessons a writer learns in writing ‘enter-educative’ works is that subjects like VVF and HIV are better subtly suggested instead of devoting nearly two pages (pp. 76 -77) on them like academic papers. Similarly, for a work well-packaged in terms of high paper quality, font size and cover-designs, the publishers cannot be exculpated for allowing some careless errors of syntax find their way into the work, to wit: ‘a mere two days’ (p. 6), ‘his minted breathe’ (p. 16), ‘ in variance with’ (p. 23), ‘a little ways ahead’ (p. 30), ‘such ugly incidences’ (p. 50), ‘other girls’ marriage’ (p. 60), ‘battered under’ (p. 66), ‘must have ensued from his joints’ (p. 67), ‘resulted to’ (p. 76), ‘… the pain that hiding these three dark passages’ (p. 93). Additionally, on two or three occasions, tenses are used indiscriminately such as: ‘Bongel has been pregnant’ (p. 27), ‘contrary to what Kauthar thinks’ (p. 27) and ‘she wouldn’t be as devastated as she is now …’ (p.8). In a third-person narrative technique in the past tense, the use of present tense can only be used sparingly in streams of consciousness or interior monologues or when making reference to a universally immutable fact. It also seems the writer had the West in mind as her audience when she was writing this work as can be gleaned from expressions like these: ‘… that reminds me that it’s haram, something wrong’ (p. ix) and ‘It was a customary tradition among the Hausa-Fulani people’ (p. 74). This appears to be the norm now, though unfortunate, that when writers are divulging some terrible facts about their cultures, they often obsequiously turn to the West for a mark of acceptance. The foregoing notwithstanding, Bobi is a fledgling albeit promising writer who deserves attention and help. She, along with her older countrywomen Razinat Mohammed and Halima Sekula are fresh exciting female Northern voices trying to carve a niche for themselves on our literary landscape. It is, however, worrisome that since the publication of Alkali’s The Stillborn in 1984, Northern Nigeria is yet to produce another female writer who can hold a candle to that literary matriarch. It is long overdue now.

The Threshing Floor (Fiction: Nigerian Writers Series No. 7)

The Threshing Floor is a collection of a dozen short stories that has just a bit of everything. From religious hypocrisy, marital infidelity and human deception and fraud, to spiritual mysteries, the limits of justice (in our land), the many and uncertain shades of love, and the redemptive (?) value of suicide, Isaac Attah Ogezi skilfully and sensitively explores the human condition in its social, pschological and spiritual dimentsions. The stories are both universal and uniquely individual as everyone can identify with one or another of the characters whose experiences are portrayed in The Threshing Floor. The author's mastery of language and power of narration will surely seduce any reader. In 2014, Ogezi was nominated for both the Soyinka Prize for African LIterature and NLNG Prize for Literature for his Under a Darkling Sky.

Angst, Departures and Homecoming in On Broken Wings: An Anthology of Best Contemporary Nigerian Poetry edited by Unoma Azuah

By Isaac Attah Ogezi Inarguably, the single most vital point of convergence between modern Nigerian literature and Nollywood film industry is the alarming output proliferation of indifferent quality. In no genre of literature is this uncontrolled proliferation more worrisome as in poetry. Perhaps owing to the mystical comparison of the poet to a prophet, almost every published Nigerian writer has a collection of poetry or two to his chest, enough to entitle him to the hallowed and surreal toga of the poet. Indeed, the god of poetry in the country has many pen-wielding acolytes! Ironically, in a country that can boast of countless poets, it is almost an impossible task to find a definitive anthology of high merit that encompasses the majority of noted poets of any her generations. Voices from the Fringe (1988) edited by Harry Garuba was the first meaningful attempt to showcase young Nigerian poets learning to cut their poetry teeth. A few of these poets, after attaining some appreciable maturation, appeared in Toyin Adewale-Gabriel-edited 25 Nigerian Poets (2000). Since then, no similar feat of any serious quality had been made until the recent anthology, On Broken Wings: An Anthology of Best Contemporary Nigerian Poetry edited by the poet and academic Unoma Azuah. Comprising ninety-five poems by seventy-three poets, the entire anthology reads like a single long narrative poem reminiscent of Eliot’s ‘The Journey of the Magi.’ The different narrative personae are intricately, albeit unwittingly, merged in a non-symmetrical litany of angst, departures and homecoming on this side of paradise. The all-pervasive theme of alienation runs through this work – alienation both in the personae’s home and abroad. The reader cannot help but empathize with the various personae’s disenchantment with what they call home. Home is where one feels like an outsider, harassed by poverty, lives at the edge of destruction and religious violence. In his ironic ‘Canticle of the Elect’, Gomba through the eyes of a zealot persona, lampoons on page 35 the religious intolerance that has become the order of the day in the country: So we rush in with trophies of skulls, impaled on the tall-poles of faith … One truth fouls the wind: if they are wrong, They are bombed. We serve the God of Smoke. Similarly, Raji on page 19 bemoans the season of anomie that has come to be recognized as the bridge for which all nations must cross on their march to greatness. The powers that be who revel in wanton violence and debaucheries believe that for a real nation to rise, bones must break empires must vanish death must be shared only like the morning grace and life has meaning only in mass coffins and mourner’s grimace… (p. 19) Raji paints a misbegotten generation where dreams of the citizenry are declared ‘in a nightmare of skeletons’ (p. 19), where ‘compatriots write new letter-bombs/To the fatherland in guises of gospel truths’ (p. 19). In such a dog-eat-dog world ‘where even the dead squirm/In crammed graveyards,/Graveyards of premature departees’ (p. 77, Kankara’s ‘Final Rites’), the personae are estranged and lost. It is indeed ‘a mad world’ (p. 30) of ‘green-less dreams’ (p. 30) as expressed by the persona in Nwosu’s ‘Listless’ (p. 30). Here home is likened to hell on earth and as each hell unfolds, we cling to this world of void when death is the very equivalent of paradise (p. 30) Consequently, these afflicted and traumatized personae cannot wait to bid their country farewell, a place that has nothing to offer them rather than to truncate their dreams, a fatherland that has long reneged its responsibilities to be called a childland, to use an apt coinage from the iconic Achebe. Instead of sadness at the point of departure, ‘There are neither tears, nor wails/Only smiles accompany the slave’ (p. 78, Fabiyi’s ‘There is No Sadness Here’). The departees can now afford to churlishly tell their childland, like the persona in Ehikhamenor’s ‘Farewell’ (p. 78), ‘I have said my farewell/And taken my rainbow elsewhere’ (p. 78). Thus marks the raison d’être behind the mass exodus of some of the best brains to the West for better living condition. Unfortunately, the personae who have left en masse the shores of their childland to a new world, have reckoned without the loneliness, racism and alienation inherent in their new home. Upon arrival, it does not take them long to know that ‘heaven does not live here’ (p. 80, Azuah’s ‘Arrivals’). Like Eliot’s Magi, the new arrivals in this new world find ‘… the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly.’ This feeling of not belonging is very poignant in Mahmud’s ‘Undercover’ (pp. 96-97), where the new immigrants bemoan their fugitive-like fate like the persona’s in the following lines: In time eternal, between the webs and my prayers, I lie, beneath, unknown, unwanted, undercover.’ (p. 97) In this wild, wild West, ‘… we are faceless among the city lights.’ (p.99, Nwakanma’s ‘Indigo Street’) This loneliness, coupled with the feeling of not being wanted, is exacerbated by the ‘bone-marrow cold/… that only Europe can radiate’ (p. 88, Ede’s ‘Winter Morning’). Otiono’s ‘Playing new tunes on my heartstrings…” on page 152 further expresses this terrible feeling of nostalgia thus: Lonesome in cold nights I play new tunes on my heartstrings Counting threads of by-gone years In far-flung lands… In an obsequious bid to belong, to be accepted, there is nothing the personae-immigrants cannot do in their new world. In a rather Okot p’Bitekesque tone, Maiwada satirizes this alienation via self-denial in ‘Our Soles, Pouring’ (pp. 85-86) as follows: Here, we swim with the whales, our immigrant irises wary of hate waves, Some have since washed an’ toned their black skins to cheat the widening nets of prejudice; to cheat the ever dropping label lines. Ironically, in the midst of this rejection, the mind is stubbornly obsessed with acute longing for the home which one had fled from despite its shortcomings. While many still cringe at the prospect of returning home, ‘Waiting for a homecoming that may never be’ (p. 137, Kankara’s ‘Homecoming’), the very few who dare to brave the odds are disappointed like Eliot’s Magi who returned to their ‘places, these Kingdoms, /But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.’ In Tubosun’s ‘Home Revisited’, the returnee persona laments on page 154: No, nothing remains here but memory, shed in vile distaste. What stares back are rough remains of such random care. Known days are gone, but remain only in the head. Age recalls, recoils, in bits of a thrill too long fled. One unique quality that makes poetry tower above any other form of written art is its ability to capture minutely the rhythm and soul-beat of a generation, its fears, failures, exile, successes and joys. The images in this work may at times be privatist like Okigbo’s poetry or Sylvia Plath’s confessionals, yet their universalism cannot be gainsaid. It is only in poetry that the intense feeling of loss and despondency can be so well expressed like in Ogunsanya’s awesome elegy, ‘You Came the Night Before’ (pp. 146-148). This is truly an ambitious anthology comprising most of the best contemporary Nigerian poets writing today. However, there are a few poems that should not have found their way into this work such as Awa’s ‘I am out in the rain’ (pp. 37-38), Ogunwale’s ‘The Future’ (pp. 51-54), Nwosu-Igbo’s ‘illegally Blonde’ (pp.123-124) and Goodhead’s ‘Grandma on Lenox Road’ (pp. 143-145). Where these poems are not prosaic and overly preachy, they are bereft of art. What is most annoying in one or two of the above poems is the flawed attempt at end-rhyming especially in Ogunwale’s and Kankara’s poems. On page 53, Ogunwale’s ‘The Future’ reads: Eagles’ wings take my sins Up into heavenly machines Paving my road, my environment Waving the decoded lessons learnt Lessons of primordial decent – Never changing intent – These ill-handled end-rhymes can also be seen in the second and third lines of Kankara’s ‘Final Rites’ on page 77, to wit: ‘I would take a final bow/From my homeland – now’. It is surprising that in an anthology that prides itself of being the best contemporary Nigerian poetry, one does expect the very best of each of the individual poets in the work but that is largely not the case here. No doubt the anthology represents the works of most of the best contemporary Nigerian poets writing today but whether their works anthologized here are their best is a question that poetry scholars will have to engage in an exegesis. Credit must given to the editor, Unoma Azuah, for the success of this impressive anthology, who herself is an important poet, for perhaps it appears it takes only a poet to recognize good poetry like the seminal Soyinka-edited Poems of Black Africa.