Re Defining the Teaching of Modern African Poetry in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions

Abstract

Over the years some teachers who teach modern African poetry experience difficulties in presenting the subject to their students at all levels. The feedback has always been that Poetry is a difficult subject, wrapped in figures of speech, imageries, and allusions to eclectic sources and restricted within lines that make its form. This paper tries to break the myth and makes poetry an attractive field to both the teacher and the student. Discussions of the subject Modern African Poetry have typically been limited to either the obscurant nature of the poetry of Soyinka, Okigbo and Clark or the subtlety of Brutus. Little attention is often given to the oral tradition that gave birth to the styles and forms of these poets, and so their poems are by this attitude detached from their roots, making it strange and difficult. This paper therefore, attempts a response to this question by highlighting the features that make Modern African Poetry a home based phenomenon and can also be studied easily like any other subject in the humanities. This study, is more pedagogically inclined, it sought to place Poetry into a larger instructionally and theoretical context; as a result, it has taken largely from the lecture notes of Professor Amali, Dr. Usha Obasi and Dr. Othman Abubakar. The paper emphasized historical development by relating changing styles of the literary representation of reality by Modern African Poets to the changes in the social history of the poet‘s milieu. The conclusion points to the fact that poetry can be made more lively, meaningful, pleasurable and satisfying, if sincere, thorough and timely coaching of students in poetry is rendered at all levels of studying poetry.