POETRY AND SOCIAL CONCIOUSNES: A STUDY OF SELECTED WORKS OF EZENWA-OHAETO

Abstract

The tendency of using poetry to project the communal values in any given society is a general preoccupation of poets from Anglophone West African countries such as Gambia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Liberia. Independence in all African countries came with social consciousness, dislocations and disillusionment; this political disjunction necessitated a change in poetic tradition, attention is thus shifted to the perennial socio-political and economic problems emanating from self-rule. Through the narration of private experiences, these poets are able to examine the social and political dislocations in their societies thereby sensitizing the public’s conscience on the happenings in their societies. This paper understudies the social consciousness in some poetry collections of Ezenwa-Ohaeto, taking a sociological approach and postcolonial theory in analyzing the poems.