Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies

Sule E. Egya ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of English, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, NG

Abstract

This study is a close explication of Abdullahi Ismaila’s political poems taken from his second volume of poetry, Ellipsis, published in 2001. Ismaila is a new poet in central Nigeria who has added his strident voice to the growing political or public poetry in Nigerian literature. This subgenre of poetry is characterized, at least in Nigerian literary scene, by the aesthetic of resistance and rage against militarized and failed leadership; and by the poet’s apparent empathy toward the ordinary people and fellow writers who are the victims of that leadership. This is what engages recent Nigerian poets such as Emman Usman Shehu, Afam Akeh, Chiedu Ezeanah, Remi Raji, B. M. Dzukogi, Moses Tsenongu, Nduka Otiono, Ismail Garba and many more others. In their disparate voices, these poets are singing songs that are suppose to achieve a dual aim:first, pierce the ears of the insensitive leaders as a poignant noise from conscientious poets; second, sensitize the society about the current anomie caused by an incompetent leadership and possibly offer hope to the land. But as we will see in Ismaila’s poetry, hope is illusory in his dramatization of the seizure of state governance by soldiers whose contribution to the society is blatant cruelty. Indeed Ismaila’s political poems studied here are focused on the heinous misrule of the late Nigerian maximum despot, General Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria from 1993 to 1998.

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Sule E. Egya

Abstract

In this collection of eighteen scholarly essays, we encounter multifarious exegeses of the works of foremost Indian novelist Raja Rao;and more importantly the novelist and his arresting nationalism. The somewhat theatrical title of the book anticipates the bustling philosophy that is the man Rao as ingrained in the distinctness of his fiction. From the preface of the book to the last chapter, the consistent rhythm is that Rao is an Indian writer worth celebrating because of his romanticisation of the Indian culture and genetic wisdom that naturally positions him as an iconoclast in his perception of the Western world. Interestingly, not only the Western readers and critics that find his works too unconventionally experimental, but also his Westernised Indian brothers. In her contribution titled “Raja Rao’s Fiction: Cultural Reassertions in the Context of Globalisation,” D. Maya hits this point when she, juxtaposing Rao’s fiction with other Western immigrant writers’ works, draws a distinction that “[Rao’s] novels assume special significance against the horde of immigrant writing that adapts itself to the discourse of the Western writers, merging identities, and diluting cultural specificities in the process of winning acceptance”.

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