The reading public of this country, as Walter Benjamin said of Germany’s a hundred years ago, can be structured into two roughly equal divisions. One is “the public.” The other is “the literary circles.” The former is primarily for entertainment or just as a pastime. The latter considers literature (rightfully or wrongly) as a well of wisdom, which may sometimes require a thread of intellectualism to draw out the deep-rooted goodness from the text. I would not be so deluded as to claim there’s no overlap between both sects\schisms, however minimal it may seem. There’s often a stark comparison between the books making waves in Nigerian booktok conversations and the ones making the rounds in Nigerian literary festivals, which begs the question: who are the country’s biggest consumers of literature? However, that’s not the primary question with which I am concerned today.
This parallelism between reading cultures perhaps came to its height a couple of months ago, when a certain netizen publicly condemned a book by Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate based on its perceived verbosity. This caused an uproar among those who believed her opinion was the general feeling of the populace, and the other camp, which felt worse still, was the book she suggested as an alternative to Soyinka’s. From the dust of this initial debate, several other comparisons rose, which again are not our primary concern.
The works in this issue focus on neither side of the schism. Instead, the reviews and critical essays differ in style as well as substance. While a good number of the book reviews are imprinted with the same impressionism that Elliot attributed to Arthur Symons, they are neither without depth nor flair. Bolaji’s exegesis of Ndubuisi’s Naija is a Badly Behaved Poem, for instance, is hinged on stylistic analysis of the punctuations of the said poem. Damilola’s exploration of Cheluchi’s The Son of the House, on the other hand, centres on the thematic preoccupation of the NLNG-winning novel, examining the text through the lens of femininity. And Olanrewaju’s review of Kola Tunbosun’s translation of Emily Grosholz’s poetry collection, though brief, is not without pith.
Of particular significance is the presence of young critical voices in this issue. There appears to be a teeming number of fresh voices in Nigerian literary criticism, many of whom are modelled after 20th-century English critics. This is very much a welcome development, as this sphere, save for a few exceptions, had previously been relegated to tedious, boring work to be done by those writers considered older or more experienced. The stereotype, however, is gradually being deconstructed, as we can see from the presence of one of such voices in Eniola Arowolo’s brilliant comparative analysis of Isaiah Gbenga’s Osogobo and Marvellous Igwe’s O Cicade. The frequent reference to Galvin’s remarks in his review of James Wright’s collection portrays the perfect picture of the modern Nigerian critic’s reliance on the voice of older or past foreign voices for guidance (and I do not mean to say this is necessarily bad in itself). The disconnect in the conversation (which there rarely is) between the works of 20th-century Nigerian critics—such as Biodun Jeyifo, Harry Garuba, Charles Nnolim and Wole Soyinka, among others, and contemporary Nigerian critics—may be said to be reflective of the neighboring genre of poetry, where similar accusations have been made.
One of the utmost goals of this journal is to place side-by-side exemplary literary exegesis that bridges both the divide identified by Walter and the disconnect across generations, without compromising on our standard of quality writing. Thus, readers may share on one page the thoughts of the iconic Nengi Ilagha appraising Okigbo, and on the next page join Eniola’s conversation with Marvellous and Isaiah. Perhaps, if, and if, we manage to keep this quiet surge on, we’ll in a few years be asking a similar question as Adedayo Agarau in his essay titled What is happening in Nigerian poetry? As Wilde wrote of Milton, “When (he) could no longer write he began to sing”, the words in this issue sing. Dear readers, I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I did.
Works In This Issue:
- Reading The Son of the House as a Trauma Narrative Through a Feminist Lens | Damilola Oyedeji (Book Review)
- THE LITTLE THINGS: A Review of Amife Sabatina’s Little Words | Jide Badmus (Book Review)
- A Review Of Tolu Akinyemi’s A god IN a HUMAN BODY | Izang Alexander Haruna (Book Review)
- ÌGBÀ ÈWE: TRANSLATION AS THE COMMON LANGUAGE OF LANGUAGES | Olanrewaju Ari-Ajia (Book Review)
- Postmodern-Secular City-Life Sexual Relations in Contemporary Urban Nigerian Writings | Yinka Adetu (Critical Essay)
- Review Of Enyabagi Nupe Mathematics By Adamu Idris Manarakis | Umar Salihu Adamu (Book Review)
- Place Poetry: a Comparative Analysis of Isaiah Gbenga’s Osogobo and Marvellous Igwe’s O Cicade | Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo (Critical Essay)
- A Portmanteau of Punctuation Marks: A Graphological Analysis of Ndubuisi’s Naija is a Badly Behaved Poem | Bolaji Ojurongbe (Book Review)
- SOCIO-CULTURAL SHOCKS AND DIFFERENTIALS IN HER MAJESTY’S VISIT: PLAY BY ADINOYI OJO ONUKABA | Tunde Olusunle, PhD & Stephen Adewumi, PhD (Critical Essay)
- The Journey | Nengi Josef Ilagha (Book Review)
Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí (Frontier XVIII) is the Asst. Curator of Poetry Column NND, poetry reader for Adroit Journal, and a 2023 Poetry Translation Centre UNDERTOW fellow. Winner of the Lagos-London Poetry Competition 2022, University of Ibadan Law LDS Poetry Prize 2022, a Best of The Net nominee (3x), he features in Frontier Poetry, Chestnut Review, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Tab Journal, Olongo Africa, Lolwe, Tahoma Review, SAND Journal, Poetry Wales, The Good Life Review, Aké Review, Poetry Column-NND, Belmont Story Review and elsewhere.