Alterity, marginality and the national question in the poetry of the Niger Delta

Abstract

In a bid to confirm the growing complexity of African literary geography and also extend the scholarly engagement of the experience of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria to the cultural sphere, this paper draws attention to the unique poetic tradition that the region sustains. Underscoring the enduring concern with the link between humanity and nature in the creative imagination of poets from the Niger Delta, it establishes continuity between the efforts of older poets like Gabriel Okara and John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo, and those of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Tanure Ojaide, Martins Adiyi-Bestman and Ibiwari Ikiriko. Utilizing insights drawn from minority discursive practices and the strategy of close reading in constructing a trans-ethnic literary tradition, it takes the works of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Tanure Ojaide and Ibiwari Ikiriko in particular as presenting articulate expressions of the sentiments and distinctive concerns of the poetry of the Niger Delta, privileging the collective dreams and contestations of the people that find expression in their poetry: insistence on registering the otherness of the Niger Delta within Nigeria and the consequent interrogation of the Nigerian project. The study is, in essence, a preliminary statement on an evolving tradition which demonstrates the manner in which poetic practices are implicated in the dynamics of identity formation in the Niger Delta.