Abstract
A recurring argument is that the tone and texture of Nigerian poetry is overly political and that neo-colonial disillusionment reached its peak in the poetry of Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Remi Raji, Tanure Ojaide and Olu Oguibe. Yet, this position might be mistaken, as some of the emerging voices, through reiterative and narratively constructed poetic strategies further the representation of personal-cum- postcolonial pain and disillusionment in their recent poetic outputs.
Extant critical studies on Nigerian poetry have privileged language debates, periodisation politics, performance and exilic discourses, satiric themes in the poetry of established writers, leaving some lacunae on the poeticisation of pain layered in the works of many emerging Nigerian poets. Against this background, I draw insights from Julia Kristeva's Abjection model and aspects of Ato Quayson's Aesthetic Nervousness to closely read purposefully from Sadiq Dzukogi's My Crib, My Qibla, Olajide Salawu's Preface for Leaving Homeland, Rasaq Malik's No Home in this Land, Ifesinachi Nwadike's How Morning Remembers the Night and Funmi Gaji's The Stitch of Bruises, to understand how their painful abjection and poetics relate the personal and postcolonial condition of Nigeria, as well as examine how their creative engagements with pain poetics reflect on the prevailing despondency of teeming Nigerian youths.
By examining the tenor, text and reception of some new Nigerian poetry of the last five years, I argue that pain, frustration, desperation and hopelessness coalesce with the dead-end feeling of the average citizenry in the country. Therefore, I conclude that in the new poetry published by many young Nigerians, there is a corresponding reflection of the national painful present, brewing grief and trauma and this will continue to shape poetry criticism.