Representations of Pasts and Memories: Critical Analysis of Selected Poems of Taiye Ojo

Abstract

Pasts and memories bear a large significance in the growing Nigerian poetry. This papercritically analyzes the representations and interrelations of pasts and memories in selected poemsin Taiye Ojo’s all of us are birds & some of us have broken wings and how the pasts andmemories add to (re)defining the poet’s understanding of his environment and experiences. Theexemplifications of past lives, violence, elegies, deaths, loss, traumas, memories in fragmentsthat can be personal and national are the concepts examined in this paper as used by the poet inunderlining the interrelations and divergences of his observations and experiences regarding thepasts and memories.