Conversation around The Third Wave of Nigerian Poets with Obu Udeozo (2)

What would you say is the defining character of The Third Wave of Nigeria Poets?
We have to be careful at this point. If there were no defining characteristics there will be no need for the differentiation in the first instance. And such dissociative markers do not lend themselves to very neat summaries; because they are several.  So we may peep at their watermarks.

In the area of language, we can see that The Third Wave Poets are more effervescent in their use of words than the earlier poets. And that is simply at the surface level of expressions which also appear to have a more global spicing or flavour. We shall need examples which your space may not accommodate.
But, there is also a caveat to this. Whereas, Okigbo, Soyinka and say the Second Wave Osundare deploy terms with more learnedness or gravitas; Uche Nduka or Amatoristero Ede can use registers with greater lightness, frolic and play – in the contemporary arena. And which a more cosmopolitan audience can relate to or recognize.  At the socio- cultural plank; The Third Wave Poets do not appear prepossessed with any agenda to project their works as ‘culture – carriers’ in the sense which Ibe Nwoga; advanced for sensitive and successful art!
The Africanness of Okigbo, Clark and Okara – inspired and propelled their art – as almost independent elements by themselves. But you do not witness the preponderance of such afflatus among our current poets. And that is where you easily also see exceptions which you asked after in your next question.  It is a categorical but not a rigid assertion. Because you have cultural lei motifs in say Promise Okekwe, Olu Oguibe, ‘Sola Osofisan and Izzia Ahmad; but not in the chromatic surplus witnessed in Okigbo, Tanure Ojaide, or even the tenuous Ossie Enekwe that comprise the other waves.
We require an excerpt from the work to meet a logical encore of these assertions.
“Pain. Anger. Protest. These are the dominating moods of The Third Wave of Nigeria Poets. Even the mildest  mannered among them are capable of hot words! The literature of the African Continent appeared destined for revolutionary themes ….
The Second Wave Poets spear-headed by Niyi Osundare were confronting inequities in the home land with condign metaphors of disgust, remonstrance and renunciation. In The Third  Wave of Nigeria Poets a tectonic shift occurs. And that is the subject of our reflections. The entire poets of Gardeners of Dreams manifest Pain. Anger. Protest: in ways that are new to Nigeria Literature in terms of the degree of their outrage, the content of their diatribe and especially the weapons deployed for their assaults! Plus a rather funny dimension – the texture in the characterization of their adversaries!

*Obu Udeozo

Unfortunately, politicians and soldiers do not read poems: otherwise the whole scale looting and corruption going on in the country would have decreased when our rulers encounter the metaphors by which our poets describe them in pitiable kinship with pigs, hyenas, wolves, tigers, cobras, vampires and every species of ugliness and greed in the animal kingdom.
That has been the main distinction of Gardeners of Dreams. Their spectacular contribution to our national discourse is their successful dehumanization of our adversaries to the level of  mindless beasts! ….
But with the advent of Gardeners of Dreams you begin for the first time in our reckoning, to have writers who from exceeding pain, anger and protest consistently ascribe to their antagonists the sub-human attributes of wild life!
After more than 40 years when Nigeria’s rulers have refused refinement, deployed progress and betrayed her citizens in every aspect of civilization; the current poets now shop for their metaphors from wild life. Images deployed on the leadership of these days are more bestial. So whereas, the antagonists of the era of Soyinka, Echeruo, Okara and Clark came from the same taxonomy: the soldier – rulers and politician predators of Gardeners of Dreams are trans-species; and have become hyenas, gorillas, tigers, cobras, dogs and pigs! As Esiaba Irobi himself concludes with a more ennobling apostrophe to the poet-persona:
I am the sparrow in the meadow
These landscapes I paint are the terrains of a mind disfigured by pain.
It gives us an inkling of some of the defining characteristic of The Third Wave Poets against the earlier practioners in our land. You may need to encounter the actual texts for exhaustive enjoyment of the expositions offered in the historic series.
Are there exceptions to this poetic age?
After dwelling on this subject for the past 16 years, I have not discovered any exceptions to the categories enounced. No human performance is perfect. None. But I will also wish to see where exceptions can be adduced. It will be interesting. But given the rigours and meiotic industry of the process; I doubt the prospectus of spotting stray pigeons in the canon.
What would you say differentiate the poetry of  the third wave from the poetry of the  first and second generations?
I believe I have already given some copious instances in the preceding answers. I do not intend to pre-empt the affects of more curious and ambitious readers who intend to encounter the published works.
Could you illustrate with examples?
Really and truly, the verse of Remi Raji, is not Mona Lisa, nor Ben Enweonwu’s Tutu; the poems of Obi Nwakanma, Toyin Adewale Gabriel, and say Chiedu Ezeanah are not like Okigbo’s Watermaid, or Soyinka’s Her Joy Is Wild … but their works represent a particular if specular form of art and our own ‘newness’ in the creative pantheon.
Like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound alerted America and Europe to the emergence of the symbolist writers; that the new poetry need not superannuate Shakespeare or the Magdalenian Cave Man; in order to be valid; I urge our readers to welcome the works with cultivated sincerity and  goodwill.
You can be sure that the critical rigours of dissociation, discernment and evaluation have been applied to these expositions, as to warrant the continuation  of the selection and sanctification ethic.  For despite the stones and insults hauled at Manet, Monet, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin at  the emergence of   Impressionism; a time came when Europe finally awoke  to the fact that a new form of art is on pirouette in their cultural firmament.
Like all human societies, this is Nigeria’s moment to progress, inspect and assimilate the creative energies twirling among her citizens – after more than Fifty Years of Independence. Our Universities, Examinations Boards, and other academic institutions and colleges across the country, have a fresh pool of data and body of work to connect and interact with: in a fluid and changing aesthetic, cultural and technological lives of our nation state.
There is something about the illustrations of the books. You used  pictures of persons from different fields of life including beauty queens, politicians and sports men and women in the same way that you used pictures of  writers and visual artists to illustrate a series on poetry. What do you intend to achieve by this?
I commend the sincerity over your strong reservations on this score. But there are varying perspectives to these issues. During the writing of the series; I had my mind set upon Will And Emil Durant’s The Story Of Civilizationand deep familiarity with Bernard Meyer’s solemn tome: Art And Civilization. There is no single photograph in any and or / all the historic series that was not directly referenced or alluded to in the main text. So be it the pictures of beauty queens or Palmwine tapers;  every illustration was conveying a storyline.