Chibueze Darlington Anuonye is on the editorial board of World Literature Today. A contributing author for The Hopkins Review and Transition Magazine, he was awarded the 2024 Richard Horovitz Fund by the Institute of International Education, for his innovative research on African writing. Anuonye's edited anthology of essays, Who Gave the Order, is forthcoming from Masobe Books in October 2025.  

In The Lightness of Being: Re-Figuring Trends in Recent Nigerian Poetry, the literary critic Harry Garuba accounted for the emergence of the first, second, and third generations of Nigerian poets, underscoring the “strategic interventions” their works inspired. In the last ten years, there has been an outburst of new poets under the age of forty who are yet to be properly categorized in the canon of Nigerian poetry. This group of young poets has made strategic interventions in Nigerian writing by establishing social media literature with Facebook as their foremost publishing platform, mainstreaming digital publishing, influencing a new tradition of queer, self-conscious, and subversive poetry, and earning significant literary prizes and commendations throughout the world. This article is my attempt to highlight the generational impetus of the work of these Facebook writers, whom I suggest are the fourth generation of Nigerian poets.

Nigerian Facebook writers of poetry, who now dominate the nation’s creative industry, impress their art on the world through digital self-publishing on social media. Most of these new poets constitute a defiant voice holding the nation accountable for criminalizing and cancelling its citizens who are differently embodied. The expression, “new poets,” does not suggest that the likes of Romeo Oriogun, Saddiq Dzukogi, and Su’eddie Vershima Agema, the three finalists for the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature, are unknown on the nation’s literary scene. It is rather an acknowledgement that their works and those of their contemporaries—the likes of Gbenga Adesina, Ebenezer Agu, JK Anowe, Nome Patrick, Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu, Itiola Jones, Adedayo Agarau, Chisom Okafor, Chibuihe Obi-Achimba, Logan February, among others—are almost invisible outside the digital space and are typically ignored by critics and teachers of Nigerian poetry despite their strategic interventions. Garuba explains that “strategic intervention brings an element of contestation into the [literary] field, interrogating the enabling assumptions that have guided production within the field and, if successful, rewriting the premises and practices that had sustained them.” This suggests that for a group of Nigerian poets to be recognized as a generation, their works ought to recreate the Nigerian experience—private and public, within and outside the country—in a style that either departs from or remarkably improves the writing of previous generations. I use the marker “generation” loosely, bearing in mind the controversies associated with classifying a group of artists into a definitive and definite mold. The yardstick guiding the conceptualization of this new generation of Nigerian poets spans age, time frame of publication, and subconsciously shared thematic and stylistic tropes. The poets whose works are featured here were born after 1980 and share similar social experiences.

Modern Nigerian poetry evolved from Africa’s experience of European colonialism. At a time when the song of freedom and independence roared across the continent’s vast space, Nigerian poets of the early twentieth century, who also doubled as politicians, wrote poems extolling the virtues of the African landscape and its peoples. To them, poetry was a response to the inhumanity of colonialism, a means to assert self-determination in the fight for independence from European colonial powers. This colonial stage of Nigerian poetry was characterized by the verses of politician-poets such as Denis Osadebay and Nnamdi Azikiwe, who, according to Garuba, are only significant in the study of the chronological history of Nigerian poetry. Classifying these poets as “pioneers,” Garuba, however, acknowledges that their work, which continued to emerge until the 1940s, lacks literary merit. The poetry of the pioneers only served the purpose of initiating the ideals of self-governance. Azikiwe’s poetry, for instance, dates back to his activist days at Lincoln University and Osadebay’s poetry illustrates the period of self-consciousness in Africa and the need for Africans to control their own destinies.

The nationalist concern of the pioneers is also evident in the works of first-generation Nigerian poets like Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, and Wole Soyinka. These poets, who Garuba refers to as “Modernist Nationalists,” continued the nationalist struggle through a cultural revolution. While the colonial project sought legitimacy by misrepresenting and maligning the histories and traditions of the colonies, these poets recuperated the rich heritage of their ingenious cultures to contest such racial and cultural defamation, reconfigure their maligned image and claim the new image as an incontestable national identity. Departing from the imitative art of the pioneers, the first-generation poets found inspiration and creative materials from the narratives, myths, and rituals of their indigenous oral traditions. In Art, Dialogue, and Outrage, Soyinka remarks that his poetry derives from the aesthetic elements of his native Yoruba culture. For Soyinka, the poet is at liberty to explore various cultural and historical deposits in their search for a veritable model of creative expression. Soyinka and Clark, in their respective abiku poems, achieve a remarkable engagement with indigenous African culture.

The cultural and nationalist enthusiasm of the 1950s to 60s was replaced by a growing sense of disillusionment with the political establishment in post-independence Nigeria. This created an opportunity for the second-generation Nigerian poets, whom Garuba calls “Marxist Nationalists,” to emerge and engage with the failings of the nation’s ruling class. The Nigerian civil war deepened the disenchantment of this generation of poets and caused the collapse of the nationalist and communal rhetoric of the past generation. For this reason, second-generation poets like Niyi Osundare, Tanure Ojaide, Odia Ofeimun, and others tended to hanker toward truth in the light of the incompetence and political mismanagement that are the bane of Nigerian political dispensations. Although missing in Garuba’s assessment, there is also Catherine Acholonu, a leading female poet of this generation, whose 1985 collection, Nigeria in the Year 1999, renders the consequences of the civil war on the nation’s citizens long after the battle ceased.    

In “Bayonets and the Carnage of Tongues,” Isidore Diala argues that the poet is naturally constituted toward iconoclasm in a state controlled by a military despot. In foregrounding his basic postulation that there is always an eternal struggle between the conscious poet and the political despot, because of the nature of the poet’s “truth” and the despot’s tyrannical hegemony, he suggests that the poet’s powerlessness gives him or her a paradoxical potential for heroism in the face of oppression. Diala’s observation is typical of third-generation Nigerian poets. The late 1980s saw the rise of this generation, the likes of Esiaba Irobi, Emman Shehu, Remi Raji, Chris Abani, and Unoma Azuah, who, in Garuba’s words, “reside within the conflicted terrain of the unresolved, acknowledging incoherences, contradictions and multiplicities without seeking the resolution and coherence that a grand narrative provides.” Garuba’s description fits Irobi, whose biography points to his embattled sense of identity. Likewise, the life and poetry of Azuah, a queer writer and activist born to a Nigerian soldier father and an Igbo mother during the war, contradict the heteronormativity of Nigerian society.

Given the state-sponsored military brutalities that characterized the 1980s and 1990s, the third-generation poets considered migration to the West as an escape from their tormentors, after fighting with words and failing to achieve any immediate change in their society. It is not surprising then that Azuah still lives in the US, that Irobi died in Germany, and that Adesanmi lived in Canada until his death. Garuba’s essay covered an impressive range of poetry collections published up to the first two years of the twenty-first century, including Uche Nduka’s Belltime Letters (2000), Godwin Ede’s Collected Poems: A Writer’s Pains (2001) and Caribbean Blues (2001), and Lola Shoneyin’s Song of a Riverbird (2002). I shall now focus on the works of young Nigerian poets published not earlier than 2010 on Facebook, in both digital and traditional magazines, and in books.

One of the most remarkable strategic interventions of the under forty Nigerian poets is that they began the social media literary tradition in Nigerian poetry as well as radically expanded digital publishing in the country. Writing on the influence of digital technology on African literature in contemporary Kenya and Nigeria, Shola Adenekan makes a similar observation in his comment that “some of the emerging voices like Nigeria’s Romeo Oriogun gained critical attention and popular following first on social media before catching the attention of book publishers.” Oriogun and his generation not only share their published poems on social media, they also publish their works on these platforms. Oriogun’s appreciation message on Facebook, on winning the 2022 edition of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, substantiates the centrality of Facebook on the emergence of this new generation: “I started writing here, working on my craft with other poets, and so I return to this space to offer my thanks to anyone who has supported me since I posted my first ‘Labake’ poem.” In “Labake,” published on Facebook in August 2014, Oriogun writes about the endless pulsations of love that tie a lover inseparably to their beloved. The poem persona, a writer, confesses that Labake’s absence has stultified his creativity and left him lonely. The only thing capable of reanimating his anguished life and inactive writing is her presence. For the work of a beginner, “Labake” surprisingly attains Wordsworth’s ideal of poetry, which privileges emotions over thoughts, through the persona’s unrestrained confession of love and longing: “My pen is useless for it writes only your name. I’m yours forever, a slave welded to your heartbeat. let me show you the colour of love, for my heart is painted with it and the chronicles of love are written on my palms.”

Like Oriogun, Samuel Adeyemi, a member of this new generation of poets, whose debut poetry chapbook “Rosh Ash” was recently published by the African Poetry Book Fund, has fond memories of his earliest years as an artist writing and publishing on social media: “I decided to begin submitting my poems to literary magazines in 2020, during the lockdown. But before the craze and glamour of local and international publishing, it was on Facebook (and Instagram) that I used to share my poetry.” For Adeyemi, the most enduring impact of his literary activities on Facebook before the pandemic was the community of readers and friends whose criticism and praise contributed significantly to his creative growth. There is also the intriguing example of Rasaq Malik Gbolahan who, in an impassioned attempt to describe the seriousness of the poet’s work, remarked on Facebook that writing “is not about coming on Facebook to bombard us with your poems.” Gbolahan’s post, a plea for patient artistic maturation, upholds the symbolic status of Facebook as the go-to publisher for his generation of poets and speaks to the kind of useful culture of camaraderie and criticism the platform enables. Moreover, Gbolahan published an emotionally devastating epistolary poem, “Dear Poet,” on Facebook in 2017. In the poem he captures the futility of a poet’s impassioned search for love in a world incapable of appreciating their genius and loving them back with the same largeness of heart with which they embraced the world. In “Dear Poet,” the poem persona writes to an unnamed and possibly younger poet, “One day you will yearn for love till your heart bleeds / till tears blur your eyes, till everything about the world burns your life.” The persona’s finality of tone is as disturbing as their prophecy. Recalling Yeats’s experience of unrequited love with Maud and Iseult Gonne, Edgar Alan Poe’s artistic fixation on love, and Lord Byron’s longing for love, the persona concludes that the world believes “it is the tradition of a poet to experience unreciprocated love.” By his reference to these preeminent figures of Irish, American, and British poetry, Gbolahan makes a resounding statement about his knowledge of poetry beyond his own budding writing.

In her poem “faith,” published on Facebook in 2018, Nuhu, one of the foremost female poets of this generation, writes about the personal and social ramifications of grief: “I believe in the curl of hair / the anguished cry of a half-buried hurt. / the slight smirk of nature over greenery kissing harmattan.” The speaker mourns the absence of truth and the ascendancy of silence caused by the darkness that has afflicted her, her family and her country. But her faith in the redemptive power of family and friendship, “like the fierce resistance of the sky / when the sun begins to sink / forcing it to spill,” triumphs over her fear of “the dirge of silence,” billowing “like the love song that exists between rain and a window” and offering her the quiet reassurance of “the tender spot that is midnight.” Nuhu’s attentiveness to the environment creates a charm that only the hue of nature can inspire.

Beyond its grand themes, the language of the poetry of this new generation of writers is unique. Ogechukwu Kanma Samuel’s “On the Road of Cumfession,” published on Facebook on December 12, 2022, illustrates this linguistic ingenuity. In this poem, Samuel invents a new word, “cumfession,” while exploring the struggle between human instincts of pleasure and morality. Even as the subject of the poem takes the “slippery … path that leads to absolution” and carries the weight of that journey for “nine months,” the pleasure she experiences on the “road to cumfession,” where “her lips spoke words / that gripped the length of men” and “her hands led men along the route,” remains at the end of the poem. By merging familiar imageries of the mundane and the sacred—“cum” and “confession”—into an antithetical linguistic trope, Samuel creates a new sexual rhetoric that alters how we engage with sex and spirituality.

Likewise, in “If Your Enemy Thirsts,” published on Facebook on December 11, 2022, Jaachi Anyatonwu defamiliarizes the discourse of pedophilia both by a witty reversal of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness and a semantic reconfiguration of the Igbo language. The poem opens with the biblical allusion, “if your enemy thirsts, give him drink, says the preacher.” This opening may mislead readers into thinking that they are about to experience another sermon on the mount, but this initial impression is erased by the proceeding lines: “so when aunty ramotu asked for a / glass of water to quench her / thirst, I added droplets of snipper to taste.” This sudden shift from benignity to brutality may shock readers who will wonder why the speaker, a mere child, is capable of murder. Possibly conscious of the terror his action will provoke in readers, the child provides a context to his action: “it’s beautiful how she sits still like / a piece of oil art—lifeless—incapable / of trapping me again, in-between / warm thighs while family sleeps.” This revelation that the child is a victim of ramotu’s sexual violation draws the sympathy of readers towards him. In this instant, the child’s action emerges as retributive justice and not murder. Even more, the child makes an impressive attempt to justify the murder by distorting the biblical doctrine with which he opened the poem, “if your enemy thirsts, give him / drink, says the preacher / nobody said it must be pure water.” Anyatonwu’s recreation of the Igbo language by compressing the expression, “raa m otu,” which literally translates to “have sex with me,” to “ramotu” is intriguing. But what he does with the recreated expression is the most striking thing about this poem. Anyatonwu bequeaths “ramotu” as a name to the child’s aunt. By this, he deploys literary onomastics to emphasize the intensity of the villain’s pedophilia, while also giving the poem a metonymic quality.

This new generation of poets does not only publish their works on Facebook, they also provide mentorship and support to one another, ensuring that their poetry is of great quality. In a Facebook post he made in 2017 to announce his forthcoming collection, The Origin of Butterflies (2018), Oriogun thanked Gbenga Adesina, “who told me last year that I should keep writing, the world will take notice only if I keep working on my craft.” Like Adesina to most of the male poets, Nuhu is an enterprising mentor to the female poets of this generation. In 2021, she, alongside the poets Bash Amuneni and Terfa Danjuma Nenger, served as a judge for the Minna Poetry Slam. Extolling Nuhu’s credibility to perform this judicial function, the poet Paul Liam made the following remark on Facebook: “Nuhu is of course an exceptional poet.… She has built solid reputation as a social activist fighting for gender rights. She is an inspiration to many, especially young Northern ladies.” The American/Nigerian poet Jones also organizes and teaches the Singing Bullet Workshop, which she founded in 2016 to promote the art and discipline of poetry.

University-based students’ magazines nurtured the creativity of this new generation of poets by publishing their works, at the start of their career. Among such platforms, The Muse, a journal of English and literary studies founded in 1963 by Chinua Achebe at the University of Nigeria, played a significant role in the growth of these poets. Two of Chisom Okafor’s earliest poems, “Chains” and “My Sister Draws Circles,” were published by The Muse in 2016, and there was a harvest of poetry in 2017 with the publication of Oriogun’s “Internal Exile,” “Tares Oburum’s “Homesong,” Anowe’s “Fugitive,” and Agu’s “Remembering Loss,” among others. The young poets in Nsukka and their colleagues in other Nigerian tertiary institutions began publishing in The Muse before they started sending their works elsewhere. The Muse encourages this by being an un-themed journal, setting up and funding prizes to reward excellent submissions. While these young poets follow in the steps of a long line of predecessors, like Emmanuel Obiechina, Romanus Egudu, Dubem Okafor, Sam Ukala, Mamman J. Vasta, and Nnimo Bassey in their literary association with The Muse, they made the strategic intervention of digitalizing volume 44 of the journal in 2016, under the editorship of Arinze Ifeakandu. That same year, the following works by new Nigerian poets were published in The Muse, “Monalisa” by D. E. Benson, “Uganda Shore” by Kelechi Ezeigwe, “If God Is a Pimp” by Confidence Jideofor, and “Love Birds” by Adaeze Michael.    

Such a precocious beginning, exemplified by the Facebook publications and the influence of The Muse, gave rise to the recognition of the literary quality of the works of this new generation of poets by national and international digital magazines and journals, which began to accept and publish their poems both electronically and in print. While online African blogs and listservs like Krazitivity and Ederi, which started in the late 1990s, and African Writer Magazine, which was established in 2004, offered publishing platforms to poets like Afam Akeh, Amatoritsero Ede, Olu Oguibe, Chuma Nwokolo, and a host of other third-generation poets, Praxis Magazine, Enkare Review, Brittle Paper, Expound, Jalada, Lunaris Review, Words, Rhyme & Rhythm, Isele Magazine, and other digital publishing platforms play important roles in advancing the careers of the under-forty generation. But, Praxis, moreover, helped to bring their poetry to a wider digital audience through the innovative introduction of the chapbook series by Laura Kamisnki. Oriogun’s Burnt Men became the second publication of the chapbook series after it was launched in March 2016. With the publication of Burnt Men, the first poetry chapbook that explores the lives and conditions of gay men in Nigeria, Oriogun amplified queer discourse in modern Nigerian poetry. If the third-generation poets considered Nigeria a victim of the tyranny of its politicians, this new generation holds it accountable for othering, criminalizing, and murdering its citizens.

Alongside Praxis, Brittle Paper has been active in the advancement of Nigerian poetry, especially by serving as a rallying point for young Nigerian poets at home and in the diaspora. The establishment of the Brittle Paper Award in 2017, for the recognition of the “finest, original pieces of African writing published online,” has helped not only to discover and reward the talents of these new poets, but also to affirm the significance of digital publishing in the twenty-first century. Anowe won the award in 2017, for his poem “Credo to Leave,” which depicts a sexual vulnerability that is daring and unpretentious, while excavating the traumatized life of a young person on the verge of insanity. Adesina and Oriogun were shortlisted for the prize in the same year, for their poems, “How to Paint a Girl” published in The New York Times Magazine and “Metamorphosis” published in Brittle Paper, respectively. In 2018, Jones won the award for “A Field, Any Field,” an autobiographical poem in which she uses the symbol of the field as a ground of struggle to describe a personal attack by her lover. Speaking on the poem shortly after winning the Brittle Paper Award, Jones reflects on her experience of the therapeutic possibilities of poetry: “the poem allows me to reclaim what was nearly taken from me—my dignity, being labeled a tragedy, and to a degree because I was nearly shamed into compliance.” Okafor was shortlisted for the award in 2018 for his poem “I Like to Think I’d Yet Manage to Weave Words into Poems” published in Expound. Beyond these prizes, Brittle Paper continues to participate in the promotion of new Nigerian poetry by publishing this generation of poets.

Despite the international exposure and the promise of reputation literary magazines offer new Nigerian poets, Adeyemi privileges his previous experience of writing and publishing on Facebook, because with magazines he has no autonomy over the processes of production, circulation and valuation of his work. Citing the example of late acceptances, he explains that this loss of agency affects the very reputation magazines exist to help establish. “Perhaps the real pain for me,” Adeyemi writes, “is that most times when a new publication comes out,” the poet may have “gone past that stage creatively as it must’ve taken months, or even years, for the poem(s) to find a home.” Ademeyi imagines that this “dilemma of growth,” as he describes his situation, can pose challenges to critics who will examine the literary trajectory of his generation. But these limitations can be minimized or even transcended by historical resources available in literary interviews, travelogues, diaries, memoirs and other forms of life-writing.      

The Lagos International Poetry Festival has helped to spotlight these new poets. Since its establishment in 2015 by Efe Paul Azino, LIPFest has risen to become one of Africa’s most notable and impactful literary and cultural festivals, especially for its success in bringing together a wide range of established writers and thinkers from across the world to mentor emerging African writers through poetry workshops, intellectual conversations, and keynote lectures. The 2019 festival featured young Nigerian poets, who performed strategic functions: Jones taught a masterclass on the craft of poetry and February on the poetics of desire and February, Anowe, and Agu constituted a panel—moderated by the editor of Open Magazine, Otosirieze Young-Obi, which discussed the works of new Nigeria poets and offered useful interpretations to their poetics. Moreover, all the above-mentioned new poets as well as their contemporaries, like Ayinla, Okafor, and Ogunyemi, participated in a poetry masterclass taught by Kaveh Akbar, author of Pilgrim Bell (2021) and a University of Iowa professor.

Equally remarkable are the contributions of the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, which was established in 2012 by the Nigerian publishing company Words Rhyme & Rhythm, in collaboration with the poet Oribhabor. The founding vision of the prize is “to give the much-needed attention Nigerian poetry deserved and encourage young Nigerian poets to use poetry as a tool for social change.” There is also Poets in Nigeria, a forum for young Nigerian poets, founded in 2015 by Oribhabo to promote Nigerian poetry. Perhaps the most outstanding initiative of Poets in Nigeria is the establishment of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize in 2016, with the aim of “stimulating literary creativity and encouraging critical thinking among Nigerian undergraduates.” Since then, the prize has been consistent in identifying and nurturing the creative talents of young Nigerian poets, rewarding them materially and publishing their works. So far, the following anthologies have emerged from the longlisted entries for the prize: The Sun Will Rise Again (2016), Mixed Histories (2017), Deep Dreams (2018), Micah (2019), The House That Built Me (2020), and Portrait of Water (2021). Okafor, a prominent member of this new generation of Nigerian poets, was the second runner-up for the inaugural Nigerian Students Poetry Prize award. Also, Adeyemi, the grand prize winner of the 2021 edition of the award, is fast becoming a remarkable poet among his contemporaries.

Like the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize, the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest—established in 2015 in honor of French poet and translator Poirson, to reward young Nigerian poets, whose talents are mostly undervalued—is an initiative of Words Rhyme & Rhythm. Facilitated by both Poirson and Kukogho Iruesiri Samson, the monthly contests provided an initial impetus for the literary breakthrough of some of the most accomplished new generation poets, who had won the prize in the past, the likes of Agarau, Eze, Kingdavid in 2015, Kanyisola Olorunnisola in 2016, Oka Benard and Emmanuel Faith in 2017, and Tukur Olorunloba Ridwan and Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact in 2018. As Poirson traces the inspiration for the founding of BPPC to her fascination with the “knowledgeable talents of young Nigerian writers on the social networks” who “craved for recognition in a very harsh environment,” she seems to echo Femi Osofisan’s articulation of the tribulations of Nigerian writers in his address at the formal opening of the Ebedi Writers Residency, a literary initiative founded by Wale Okediran in 2010 to provide a free and conducive writing space to African writers wishing to complete their works in progress. In answering the question, “why do writers need such sponsorship anyway?,” Osofisan remarks that Nigerian writers “need help because the business of writing, though arduous, is not yet in our country a lucrative affair.”

Literary prize-giving bodies like the Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation, founded by Ugandan poet Beverly Nambozo Nsengiyunva in 2008 to promote the works of emerging African poets, and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, founded by Bernadine Evaristo in 2013, have helped to bring the works of new Nigerian poets, together with their counterparts across Africa and the diaspora, to global recognition. The 2018 Babishai Niwe Poetry Award longlist could be described as a Nigerian list because of the overwhelming number of new Nigerian poets whose works it recognized. Out of the thirty-five longlisted poets, twenty-six Nigerians dominated the list, including Adeyemi, Agarau, Osadolor Osayande, Nebeolisa, and Salawu Olajide. On the other hand, in awarding its first prize to Kenya-born Somali British poet Warsan Shire, Evaristo accounts for the inspiration behind the establishment of the Brunel. Noting the austerity of prizes in African poetry in relation to fiction, she emphasizes her belief “that poetry from the continent could also do with a prize to draw attention to it and to encourage a new generation of poets who might one day become an international presence.” The following new Nigerian poets have won the Brunel prize: Adesina and Chekwube O. Danlandi in 2016, Oriogun in 2017, and Othuke Umukoro in 2021. Moreover, some of their contemporaries have been shortlisted for the prize over the years: Inua Ellams in 2014, 2015, 2019, and 2020; Kechi Nomu and Gbolahan in 2017; Gbenga Adeoba and Theresa Lola in 2018; Mary-Alice Daniel, Omotara James, and Selina Nwulu in 2019; Oluwadare Popoola and Yomi Sode in 2021; and Okafor and Adedayo in 2022.

Much of the accomplishment of the Brunel International Africa Poetry Prize has been due to the partnership and support of the African Poetry Book Fund founded by Kwame Dawes in 2012, “to promote and advance the development and publication of the poetic arts through its book series, contests, workshops, and seminars and through its collaborations with publishers, festivals, booking agents, colleges, universities, conferences and all other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa.” The New Generation African Poetry chapbook series established in 2014 by the African Poetry Book Fund, with the aim of identifying the “best poetry written by African poets working today,” has been instrumental in the growth of new Nigerian poets. For instance, the 2017 chapbook edited by Dawes and Chris Abani featuring the works of new Nigerian poets like Danlandi, Mary-Alice Daniel, and Ejiofor Ugwu was profiled in Vogue Magazine by Zimbabwean writer Tariro Mzezewa, who remarked that the “anthology reminds [her] that poetry… that gives voice to women, immigrants, and people of color has a crucial place in the fight against demagoguery—and that history will remember the way that we treat the most vulnerable among us.” Another initiative of the African Poetry Book Fund is the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry, which was established in 2017 and is “awarded annually to an African poet who has not yet published a collection of poetry, with a monetary reward of USD $1000 and book publication through the University of Nebraska Press and Amalion in Senegal.” Two new Nigerian poets, Tares Oburum and Abu Bakr Sadiqq, won the prize in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Additionally, the following new Nigerian generation poetry collections have been published by the University of Nebraska Press through the African Poetry Book Fund: Oriogun’s Sacrament of Bodies and Adeoba’s Exodus in 2020 and Dzukogi’s Your Crib, My Qibla in 2021, among others.

Perhaps the most eloquent acknowledgement of the strategic interventions of the works of these Facebook writers and their contemporaries is reflected in the statement by the jury of Nigeria Prize for Literature, which shortlisted Agema’s Memory and the Call of Water (2021), Oriogun’s Nomad (2021), and Dzukogi’s Your Crib, My Qibla, for its 2022 prize in poetry, with the following remarks:  “Memory and the Call of Water is a collection that consistently uses memory to reflect on life and destiny through the metaphor of water, Nomad has a fresh language and a nostalgic engagement with the themes of exile and displacement, while Your Crib, My Qibla translates tragedy into lyrical poetry with pathos and effortless imagery.” Established with the vision of articulating and substantiating “excellence and craftsmanship,” the $100,000 monetary value literary prize founded by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas in 2014 has, according to Diala, “risen in its symbolic value from its initial focus on revamping the quality of publishing in the country to becoming arguably the most powerful cultural institution for validating Nigerian/African view on artistic excellence.” By selecting Memory and the Call of Water, Nomad, and Your Crib, My Qibla from a longlist of eleven of poetry collections, most of which are authored by established poets of the third generation, the NLNG jury exercised the power of literary canonization and legitimating, “affirming,” as Frank Kermode puts it, “that some works are more valuable than others, more worthy of minute attention.” It is also this power to canonize and legitimate that the Association of Nigerian Authors exercised in awarding its 2022 prize in poetry to Agema for his above-named collection. Perhaps it is useful to mention that the emergence of Oriogun’s collection A Gathering of Bastards as a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award places Nigerian poetry beside the best of American letters.

There is hardly any generation of writers with a monolithic engagement with themes and style, so I do not suggest that this new generation of poets writes in the same manner or about the same issues. Rather, I emphasize that most of them emerged from the same experience of globalization and respond to that reality in a manner that did not exist in Nigerian poetry before them. Facebook, which has led to the democratization of thoughts, the villagification of the globe, as well as the globalization of the village, has been useful in driving the rich social and cultural conversations at the heart of the poetry of this new generation, whether they write from or outside the country, whether they write about Nigerians at home or those in the diaspora, whether they are protesting social injustice or just catching cruise with their frustrations as Nigerians, or as inheritors of the brokenness of their literary predecessors. If this brokenness caused “a lightness of being,” as Garuba suggests, in the poetry of the third generation, it has now provoked a confessional attitude among this new generation of poets. They do not confess guilt or shame, but the unbearable weight of being Nigerians. These Facebook writers are a feathery generation, having no rigid ideological rootedness, except one that is grounded in the magic and miracle of the self, in mental and emotional freedom.