Youth, Poetry and the Nigerian Traumatic

In a nation like Nigeria that is not so far removed from constant distress and anguish, it is only reasonable that literature, especially from young writers, serves as the analytical medium of these experiences.

Written by Kamaldeen Arasi

Jan 12, 2025

Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC. Ref: Poet, Ude Ugo Anna / INSTAGRAM.

The past generations of Nigerian poets expended colonialism, neocolonialism, exile, racism, and political corruption as some of the thematic preoccupations of their work. However, if the purpose of poetry is the emotional and rational understanding of the human condition, as the American critic, Yvor Winters, insists in Forms of Discovery, then our younger Nigerian poets’ concentration on trauma (both national and individual), our history of violence, and to some extent, spirituality, is simply inevitable.

While many of the past literary preoccupations are still present in our current work, they are no longer as central to our recent literary concerns as trauma, spirituality, and criticism of our social and political conventions. Even though the latter themes receive condensed attention from our new poets, sometimes to the point of impulsive proliferation (much like the former themes in the hands of older poets), it is also true that the significance of the individual is often overshadowed by the collective experience. Hence, in select poems by younger Nigerian poets, these issues examining the Nigerian traumatic experiences find proper identification as well as representation through fresh perception.

WHAT DISTANCE BETWEEN THE BULLET AND THE BODY?

Trauma is a universal reality. Since literature is, to a considerable extent, a representation of the real, the traumatic is what the poet feels for his world to write of both its blissful and bleak intensities. This dated notion of fashioning lived experience to literary introspection is precisely what has fascinated, and continues to fascinate, our poets, both young and old, inspiring their strong artistic enthusiasm. In a nation like Nigeria that is not so far removed from constant distress and anguish, it is only reasonable that our literature serves as the analytical medium and appropriation of these experiences. In poetry, however, those experiences—when we recollect them, strung with fine language and parallel figurations—become a deeper and stricter way of rehearsing the past, rising to the level of the transcendental sublime that provokes not only reasoned contemplation on that past but also affects our measured approach to the present while also preparing us for the future.

Having become acquainted with the world at its most distressed and strained, the Nigerian poet, active in and perceptive to the Nigerian conditions through the proportionate lens of our society and its politics, our religions and their shortcomings, becomes the best to articulate, for instance, the irresponsible means of our political leaders which consequently leads to unencouraging ends for us—ends that are far removed from the human ideal. It is no doubt that our poets represent these stark conditions with unrivalled intensity as any primary witness of capable literary integrity should.

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About the Author

Kamaldeen Arasi

(b. Kamolideen Oluwapelumi Arasi) is an English Language and Literature undergraduate at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. A poetry editor at Hominum Journal, he was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Academic Writing Prize in 2020. In 2023, he won the E. E. SULE/SEVHAGE Prize for African Literary Criticism.

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Youth, Poetry and the Nigerian Traumatic

WHAT DISTANCE BETWEEN THE BULLET AND THE BODY?