Gloria MT Emezue

The study argues that variables of style, linguistic sociolect, and thematic thrusts identifiable in contemporary African poetry from the Western, Eastern, and Southern regions of Africa owe much to the interplay between social forces and the poets’ understanding and interpretation of these forces on the one hand, and the interaction between poems in an anthology on the other. What we finally comprehend as a poet’s unique style, presented through language, is informed by his/her interpretation of political, economic, sociohistorical, cultural, philosophical, and religious factors within a dialogic interplay of mutual recognition and utterances.