respect to improvement on the lives of the people will also be contributory to this “going
away” that Serote hints at in the collection.
Finally, it is important to remark that the aesthetic highpoint of the works that have come
under study in this thesis, taken individually or together, can be summed in the
observation that they stand the test of postcolonial art. This is evident in the way they,
among other things, engage with what Boehmer would prefer to call the contention “with
English... as the vehicle[s] of empire by subverting the language from within, and...
infusing English with the rhythms of local orature” (9). The assertion is true of Oguibe
with his resort to the deployment of elements of oral tradition such as myths, proverbs,
etc. as it is of Anyidoho, whose reliance on the Anlo-Ewe dirge tradition serves to
reinforce the enormity of the phenomenon of exile in the postcolony. A similar artistic
current runs through the poetry of Mapanje whose deployment of the verbal art woven
around the mythical character of the chameleon finds relevance in the quest to engage
with power. As well as the recourse to other elements of the oral tradition, Ofeimun and
Ojaide, the two Niger Delta poets in this study, also endeavour to bring the subversion of
English to bear on their work through the intentional inclusion of Pidgin in demonstration
of a form of linguistic hybridity that serves to brace the indigenous linguistic
fragmentation of the region. The recurrent repetition which serves as a distinguishing
hallmark of Serote’s poetry also, no doubt, owes it to the oral tradition, allowing us in the
end to concur that poetry within the postcolonial context does not only engage and
interrogate imperialism, but also impacts on considerations of art through its reputation
for linguistic subversion as demonstrated in all the works.
However, beyond the argument about the convergence in the way the poets have
deployed language, it is important to also remark that the works are also punctuated by
aesthetic differences which of course foreground the inimitable stylistic signature of
individual poets. For instance, Serote’s conscious composition of a long poem in form of
a book is significant in the way it brings an African epic aesthetics to bear on his art. It
moreover speaks to a poet’s attempt to grapple with the reinvention of his peoples’
struggle against a brand of colonialism which, owing to its unprecedented gestation,