yet they often ended up “in economic crisis, political repression or social failure” (John
Foran 2005:1). Whether as a coincidence or not, it becomes understandable why among
African poets there should also be a deserving tradition of a second generation.
In West Africa, for instance, the poets’ concern was an impassioned commentary on the
situation in the sub-region in a sense that reflected the pulse of the oppressed people. In
this region, the production of this generation of poets was numerically formidable,
especially in Nigeria. Some notable names are Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Tanure
Ojaide, Harry Garuba, Femi Fatoba, Mamam Vatsa, Okinba Launko (Femi Osofisan
2001) Funso Aiyejina, to mention but a few. Kofi Anyidoho, Atukwei Okai and Kobena
Acquah make the frontline in Ghana. According to Niyi Osundare (1996:27):
Theirs...is the literature of social command, extremely sensitive to the social realities
around them, but without losing sight of the aesthetic imperative of their works. This
generation shocked African literature with a combativeness and radicalism never
experienced before. The thematic preoccupation remains the desperate situation of
Africa.Most of these poets who began to write and publish in various magazines and journals
from the late 60s of the 20th century began to express their radicalism, extending it
ultimately to the point of individual publication of collections in the 70s and beyond. The
disappointment of the military political class which exceeded that of the civilian
government in praetorianism and privative tendencies becomes the preoccupation of
Anyidoho in Elegy for the Revolution (1984). The subtext of this is that the people have
lost confidence in both forms of leadership. In Odia Ofeimun’s debut, The Poet Lied
(1980), there is a “directness” that shows the indictment of the leadership in the various
crises into which the Nigerian nation had been plunged, especially the three-year long
internecine civil war between 1967 and 1970.
This radicalism was also to be seen in the bias of most of these poets for socialist
ideology, a consciousness which defined the problem in the region as primarily class-
based. This view was to be further promoted by the Ibadan-Ife School through various
fora and conferences (Georg Gubelberger 1998: 52; Femi Osofisan 2001: 172; Titi
Adepitan 2002:66). Niyi Osundare’s collections, Songs of the Marketplace (1983), The