Facebook Writers: The Emergence of a New Generation of Nigerian Poets

In his 2005 article "The Lightness of Being: Re-figuring Trends in Recent Nigerian Poetry," the literary critic Harry Garuba accounted for the emergence of the first, second, and third generations of Nigerian poets. But recently, there has been an outburst of new Nigerian poets under the a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inResearch in African literatures Vol. 54; no. 3; pp. 131 - 146
Main Author Anuonye, Chibueze Darlington
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Bloomington Indiana University Press 22.09.2024
Subjects
Appreciation
Classification
Colonialism
Culture
Generations
Internet personalities
Intervention
Literary criticism
Literary prizes
Mainstreaming
Nigerian literature
Oppression
Poetry
Poets
Publishing
Publishing industry
Social media
Social networks
Trends
Works
Writers
Nigeria
Africa
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Summary:In his 2005 article "The Lightness of Being: Re-figuring Trends in Recent Nigerian Poetry," the literary critic Harry Garuba accounted for the emergence of the first, second, and third generations of Nigerian poets. But recently, there has been an outburst of new Nigerian poets under the age of forty, who are yet to be properly categorized. This article adopts Garuba's "strategic intervention" as a theoretical framework for the classification of these new poets. In presenting its views that these poets have made strategic interventions in Nigerian poetry by establishing social media literature with Facebook as their foremost publishing platform; mainstreaming digital publishing; influencing a new tradition of queer, self-conscious, and subversive poetry; and earning significant literary prizes, this article revises Garuba's classification and expands the canon of Nigerian poetry to inaugurate these Facebook writers and their contemporaries as the fourth generation of Nigerian poets.
ISSN:0034-5210
1527-2044
DOI:10.2979/ral.00020