Darlington Chibueze Anuonye, a literary conversationist, editor and writer, is editor of The Good Teacher: An Anthology of Essays in Honour of Teachers, curator of Selfies and Signatures: An Afro Anthology of Short Stories and the international anthology of writings, Through the Eye of a Needle: Art in the Time of Coronavirus. He is also co-editor of Daybreak: An Anthology of Nigerian Short Fiction. Anuonye was awarded the 2021 Amplify Fellowship of the MasterCard Foundation, longlisted for the 2018 Babishai Niwe African Poetry Award and shortlisted in 2016 by the Ibadan Poetry Foundation for its inaugural residency. He is presently the nonfiction editor of Ngiga Review.
At the 2022 Literary Arts festival, Mr Darlington Chibueze Anuonye presented a lecture on the uprising of new poets fondly called “Facebook writers”. While the poems of these writers are highly evocative and possessive of the literary aura, these writers make use of the Facebook platform to promote their writings. The Facebook platform itself has proven to be a fluid medium for self-publishing and the general appreciation of writers.
Mr Anuonye identified three generations of poets who have come across the African literary scene, the first generation who were equally pioneer poets include the likes of Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, J. P. Clark and Gabriel Okara. African Literature, however, has evolved to the third generation of poets from which a reasonable number of writers emerge fully into the literary scene by publishing their works via the Facebook platform. The proliferation of poets and poetry in the present time may in fact be credited to the viable opportunity which Facebook offers budding writers.
“If you throw up a stone in Ibadan it may hit a poet.” This statement, credited to the writer Mabel Segun, points to the abundance of literary talents in the then University College Ibadan, now University of Ibadan, in the earlier years of modern Nigerian literature, having produced such eminent writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, J.P Clark, and Segun herself. Considering the expansion of literary creativity in Nigeria in recent times, it is necessary to tweak this expression to reflect the incredible outburst of young poets writing today in the country. So, let me say, “If you throw up a stone in Nigeria, it may hit a new Nigerian poet”.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Several Nigerian poets indeed launched their writing careers on Facebook as their foremost publishing platform. Amongst others, Mr Anuonye highlights the likes of Romeo Oriogun, Saddiq Dzukogi, Su’eddie Vershima Agema, Hauwa Shaffi Nuhu, Itiola Jones, Adedayo Agarau, Chisom Okafor, Chibuihe Obi-Achimba, Ejiro Edward.
By defining these set of poets as relatively “new”, Mr Anuonye does not suggest that they are typically unknown, but rather that their works are yet to receive critical attention from scholars who fail to identify the prodigy in their writings and engage their works. Sadly, the works of these writers tend to be largely overlooked or underappreciated for sake of their being published only via the digital platform.
For their profound creative vision and unique voices, I propose that these poets and their contemporaries, the likes of Gbenga Adesina, Ebenezer Agu, JK Anowe, Nome Patrick, Logan February, and others, who are under the age of forty, constitute a new generation of Nigerian poets.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye