ORAL AESTHETICS AND SOCIOPOLITICAL TEMPERS IN TANURE OJAIDE’S INVOKING THE WARRIOR SPIRIT

Abstract

The interface between orality and the written word constitutes the centre stage of modern Nigerian poetry, and it has earned impressive critical explorations. Existing studies on the poetry of Tanure Ojaide have examined his representation of environmental and folkloric experiences, but with little or no attention on the interplay of oral aesthetics and sociopolitical commitment in his poetry. This study, therefore, investigates Ojaide’s appropriation of oral aesthetic features as vehicle for political mobilization in his poetry collection, Invoking the Warrior Spirit. The study adopted aspects of the Postcolonial Theory to account for cultural hybridity and plurality in the poems under study. The primary text, Invoking the Warrior Spirit, was purposively selected and subjected to qualitative literary analysis, showing how indigenous oral features serve as poetic strategies to convey sociopolitical consciousness and commitments. Besides the close reading of the selected poems in this anthology, secondary materials were gathered from books, journals and internet sources. The analyses of relevant poems in Tanure Ojaide’s Invoking the Warrior Spirit reveal the appropriation of oral aesthetic features like proverbs, songs, dances, invocations, folkways, folkwords, repetitions and parallelisms, to convey messages that are of socio-political relevance. The interplay of oral aesthetics and sociopolitical commitment pervades the anthology. This is reflected in Tanure Ojaide’s resentment against political oppression as evident in the sociopolitical depreciation and suppression of the Niger Delta peoples by the multi-national oil companies and their collaborators at the corridor of power.