Osundare advocates the poetry of performance- performance instructions and musical effects are part of the poems - as at once creative and deeply political. The present collection testifies, wholly convincingly, to the poet's belief that language - the Word - defines personal and social history, expression and identity. 'In the Beginning was not the Word/In the Word was the Beginning', launches the volume and is its constant refrain. Language may sometimes be impotent or illusory - the middle section, 'Silence', reflects upon political censorship, the struggle of illiteracy, and the agonies and ambivalence of writing in the colonial language. But words which commit to 'truth and dream', and preferably, 'throw bridges/Across gulfs of indifferent ears, are the poet's only tool of communication for change.

The Word is an Egg: Poems (English and Yoruba Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Niyi Osundare

Poetry

Kraft Books Ltd

A Nigerian re-working of Shakespeare's Othello, this is an ambitious effort in the tradition of much contemporary Nigerian drama and spirit of cultural exchange to translate the timeless and classic work into the language, cultural reality and settingof the Igbo people. Yerima's play responds to the humanistic values, social and religious sensibilities of the original, reinventing them to speak for different people of a different age. From these perspectives, the play raises questions about the freedom of the individual in society, the nature of collective existence, and whether folly and greatness, jealousy, suspicion, tradition and love can co-exist.

Otaelo

Yerima, Ahmed

Dramas & Plays

A collection of poems as meditations on subjects as diverse as tradition, the poet's artistic relationship with Ted Hughes, Ken Saro Wiwa, the ancestors, strikes, black-white children, the `real world' versus the world of poetic creation, Lagos and Abuja. In common, the poems have the interests of Africa at heart. They are told with a sardonic wit, and express a basic faith in the power of creative expression.

Heart Sounds

Lamikanra, Adebayo

'My ancestors were minstrels. Their honeyed tongue could weave lyrics out of almost all forms of human interactions and activities. This tradition is encapsulated by the performance of the famous ode poetry prevalent among their descendants, which is presented under numerous kinds of stimuli. Thus the emotional impulses expressed here, the rhetorical modes adopted here and the verbalised rhythmic sequences illustrated here are derived from the minstrel tradition associated with ode poetry performance... The use of alternative poetic models is equally a result of a sophisticated understanding of the forms of performance discernible in other traditions...it is the amalgamation of imaginative narratives, folklore and contemporary concerns... There is no doubt that this cultural model of the minstrel generates abundant inspiration and provides a variety of artistic modes that enable the mind of the poet to distil new chants. I drank from the spring of tradition. My ancestors were minstrels and I have only continued in the same tradition.'

Chants Of A Minstrel

Ezenwa-Ohaeto

OHAETO, Ezenwa

History & Criticism

Winging Words. Interviews With Nigerian Writers And Critics

Voice Of The Night Masquerade

A Carnival of Looters

Olafioye, Tayo

Ifowodo was a frontline student leader in the early eighties and is a lawyer and civil rights activist. In 1996 he was a writer-in-residence at the Heinrich Boell Foundation. He was imprisoned between 1997 and 1998 and was subsequently adopted by PEN. This is his first collection of poetry which won the 1993 Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize. Many of the poems are responses to politics; or spring from the tensions between writing political poetry, or art for art's sake, and other competing subjects of poetry, such as romantic love. The poet, quoting Neruda, first asks the reader expecting a poetic celebration of his natural world to 'come see the blood in the streets'. In the section section he writes tributes to Tracey Chapman, Winnie and Nelson Mandela and Margeret Thatcher ('the butcher'). The subject of the third section is the rediscovery of romantic love, amidst and beyond turmoil and oppression.

Homeland and Other Poems

Ifowodo, Ogaga

Esiaba Irobi's Drama and the Postcolony: Theory and Practice of Postcolonial Performance

Diala, Isidore

Ahmed Yerima's play celebrates the phenomenon of twins among the Yoruba people. Orisa Ibeji is also about man's fear of death and love of life; destiny and reincarnation; and the place of the gods in human affairs. Yerima employs simple and beautiful language, dynamic characters and deft skill to navigate the labyrinth that is Orisa Ibeji.

Orisa Ibeji

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