Abstract: | In Nigeria the 1980s were a decade in which there emerged a poetic vintage of a different tenor. Although the poetry of this period constitutes part of what is generally referred to as postwar Nigerian poetry, the decade possesses the specific attribute of having been the period during which the postwar poets articulated in bold relief political and social views of their society. But more important is the fact that the Nigerian poet of the eighties has chosen a new idiom of literary expression in which linguistic and rhetorical means are abundantly deployed for linguistic clarity. Proverbs, tongue twisters, riddles, communal traditions, even folktales in snippety forms are built into poetic lines, certainly with the intention of Africanizing poetic mediation. For the first time, the language of Nigerian poetry was stretched to accommodate humour, transliteration, novel use of pronominals, word play, and dramatic tonation, as well as the pidginized intermedium. Note, ref. |