LITERATORS' CORNER

"Vanity" by Birago Diop: A Raditical Analysis by Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy Vanity If we tell, gently, gently All that we shall one day have to tell, Who then will hear our voices without laughter, Sad complaining voices of beggars Who indeed will hear them without laughter? If we cry roughly of our torments Ever increasing from the start of things, What eyes will watch our large mouths Shaped by the laughter of big children What eyes will watch our large mouths? What heart will listen to our clamouring? What ear to our pitiful anger Which grows in us like a tumour In the black depth of our plaintive throats? When our Dead come with their Dead When they have spoken to us with their clumsy voices; Just as our ears were deaf To their cries, to their wild appeals Just as our ears were deaf To their cries, to their wild appeals Just as our ears were deaf They have left on the earth their cries, In the air, on the water, wh...

Gbemisola Adeoti's "Ambush": A Raditical Analysis by Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy MEET THE POET Gbemisola Adeoti holds a PhD in English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He worked as a reporter/researcher with The News Magazine, Lagos, before joining the English Department of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, where he is currently a professor and director of the Institute of Cultural Studies. His areas of teaching and research include dramatic literature, literary history, literary theory and popular culture. His publications include Naked Soles , Voices Offstage , Aesthetics of Adaptation in Contemporary Nigerian Drama and Nigerian Video Film in Yoruba . He co-edited (with Bjorn Beckman) Intellectuals and African Development: Pretension and Resistance in African Politics and (with Femi Osofisan ) Playwriting in Nigeria Today. (culled from  http:// www.africanbookscollective.com / authors-editors / gbemisola-adeoti ) THE POEM Ambush ...

"Piano and drums" by Gabriel Imomotime Okara: A Raditical Analysis                                         —Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy THE POET Meet Gabriel Imomotime Okara Gabriel Okara was born in 1921 in Nembe in the Rivers State of Nigeria. After his secondary education at Government College, Umuahia, he became a book-binder. From then on he developed a remarkable personality through personal tuition, reflection and a deep interest in literature and in the language and culture of his people. Okara is one of the most significant and serious early Nigerian poets. He started writing poetry in the early fifties and still writes. Some of his war poems are among the best of this class of Nigerian poetry. Okara is interested in music and this shows not only in the lyrical grace of his poetry, but also in some of his imagery. The motifs of childhood, innocence and nostal...