Sule Emmanuel Egya

In his introduction to the seminal anthology “Voices from the Fringe: An ANA Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry” (1988), Harry Garuba announces the emergence of a new generation of Nigerian poets. Their poetry thematizes the military oppression in Nigeria in the 1980s and the 1990s. This research identifies the context, intertextuality, self-reflexivity, and dialogism in this dirge-like poetry, and situates it in the tradition of Nigerian poetry in English to show how the new poetry advances the discourse of nationhood, and how it distinguishes itself as a distinct generational response to a particular historical situation. The analytical focus is on the representative poetry of Remi Raji, Toyin Adewale, Ogaga Ifowodo, Emman Usman Shehu, Abubakar Othman, and Maria Ajima.