Dissidence, Gender, and Psychosocial Tempers in Contemporary Nigerian Poetry

This collection brings contemporary Nigerian poetry into focus, bridging the gap between celebrated masters like Wole Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo and the dynamic voices emerging in the 21st century. It features fifteen essays, offering fresh perspectives on the intersection of poetry and political dissidence, responses to terrorism, the poetics of trauma and healing, questions of national identity, and peace-building through poetic expression.

Bartholomew Chizoba Akpah, Tubman University, Harper, Liberia; Thomas-Michael Emeka Chukwumezie, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.

"From dissenting figures, tabooed sexuality, substance dependence, mental fissures, eco-disasters, and trauma to terrorism, Dissidence, Gender, and Psychosocial Tempers in Contemporary Nigerian Poetry covers an important arena in African literature often sidestepped in international scholarship: the 21st-century Nigerian poetry subtradition. This subtradition records the threnodies triggered by the mood and the events of the contemporary Nigerian experience. In thirteen chapters of this edited volume, critics delivered on their midwifing roles very deftly, making forays into the future of this genre while providing a link to that of previous generations.

Bartholomew Chizoba Akpah and Thomas-Michael Chukwumezie have assembled a rare intervention. Much labour has been bestowed on it, as manifest in the volume’s organisation, chapter structuring and intentional prose. For scholars and students in literary studies, conflict resolution, gender studies, psychology, sociology and history, here is a volume to read and pass on." Professor Ignatius Chukwumah, Federal University, Wukari, Nigeria.

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"Deeply grounded in the dynamic oeuvre of 21st-century Nigerian poets, this edited volume assembles a solid cohort of scholar-writers expertly charting the genealogical links between the activist and aesthetic labours of pioneer Nigerian poets and the contemporary voices shaping the nation's literary landscape. An essential critical intervention on the enduring significance of Nigeria's poetic tradition." James Yékú, associate professor of African and African American Studies, University of Kansas, U. S A.

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 "This is a long-awaited source book for all those interested in modern Nigerian poetry." Kazeem Adebiyi-Adelabu, Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.