POLITICAL AGITATIONS AND THE ALTER-NATIVE POETIC TRADITION: AN EVALUATION OF SELECTED POEMS OF NIYI OSUNDARE AND TANURE OJAIDE

Modern African poetry has been a tool for political agitations. But before the emergence of the Alter-Native poets, the discipline was dominated by the African Euro-modernist writers such as Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo and J.P. Clark, whose poetry was very difficult and perhaps impenetrable to their readers. They captured African political realities with western imagery, metaphors, and symbolism. Hence, their poetic style was completely obscure and esoteric, thereby restricting the reading and understanding of their poetry to a few educated elite. But the Alter- Natives rejected this approach in the presentation of resistance poetry, and as such chose to simplify their diction and style. This study is an exploration of the means by which the poets of the Alter- Native Tradition attempt to achieve an operational synergy between aesthetic redefinition of poetry and the communication of resistance objectives and revolutionary struggles to all politically disadvantaged populations of Africa. The poetry of Tanure Ojaide and Niyi Osundare has been examined here to prove that although poetry could be written in a simple language to engage in political agitations, it might not be by any means propagandist or bereft of sophistication.