NLNG PRIZE

If it wasn’t obvious enough that the leading poetic voices on the continent now belong to a new generation of writers bred in the jungles of the internet and raised in the angst of 21st-century dilemmas and preoccupations, the new NLNG prize shortlist has made it clearer.

Martin Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art describes language as “home of being.” He also describes poetry as a form with powers to disclose “being.”

The housemaid remains a fixture in many Nigerian middle-class families, attesting to the social stratification in the dominant culture. Ironically enough, not many Nigerian novelists have significantly dramatized the plight of domestic servants, the world of servitude that entraps many of their kind.

Unstable leadership in African countries hasn’t just ruined family lives, it has fried the mental house of men and women whose talents and skills could have built a thriving society.