A PSYCHOANALYTICAL STUDY OF SELECTED NIGERIAN CONFESSIONAL POETS

Abstract

This paper explores some of the poems of four contemporary young Nigerian poets, namely J.K. Anowe, Romeo Oriogun, Logan February and Saddiq Dzukogi. These poets belong to a new school in Nigerian literature that some critics have dubbed ‘confessional poets’ because of the extreme intimacy and self-revelatory nature of their poetry. The poets and their poems are purposively selected to delineate different aspects of Nigerian confessional poetics, namely the foregrounding of the self, an obsessive quest for individuality amid the peremptory demands of the family and society, the use of autobiography as a way of proposing a poetics of liberation and the explorations of non-normative sexualities in a heteronormative society. The paper employs both critical and explanatory approach within the epistemology of close reading and psychoanalysis to arrive at the conclusion that this group of poets constitutes a radical deviation from Nigeria’s existing poetic traditions.