SLEEPING CROCODILES ARE NOT DEAD: Echoes of The Civil War in Contemporary Niger Delta Poetry.

The versification of Nigerian Civil War poetry which started during and immediately after the civil war in 1970 has continued to resonate in the writings of the Niger Delta poets even in the present twenty first century. In Nigeria as a whole, the pioneers in war poetry include Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo and Essie Enekwe. Like the above poets, the poets from the Niger Delta area of Nigeria have also continued to vent their anger on the devastating effects of the war on the people of that region. These poets have shown their sense of history through the documentation of the harrowing and bitter experiences of the casualties of the war which has been aptly described as the ugliest episode in the history of postcolonial Nigeria. Not only that, its literature has been portrayed as the most recurring theme in Nigerian literature. This paper attempts to re-affirm that even in the new millennium, Niger Delta poets have, unabatedly, reminded us of the genocide, rape and torture that greeted the war. The paper also attempts to show that the present prevailing scenarios in that part of the country today, which have resulted into kidnapping, banditry, rape, protests, and all sorts, are echoes of an impending civil war, if not nipped in the bud. The poems of a selected Niger Delta poets: Ebi Yeibo, Hope Eghagha, Ekanpou Enewaridideke and others who write between the year 2000 and the present are used to justify the above. The paper argues that reference to the war and its antecedents is still part of the thematic directions of Nigerian, albeit Niger Delta poetry in the twenty first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]