ABSTRACT
This study examines the intertextual relationship between second
generation Nigerian poets and the recent Nigerian poets from the
perspectives of power relation and canon formation. The study submits
that Niyi Osundare, the iconic poet of the second generation stock,
exerts a lot of intertextual influence on the poetic practice of
contemporary Nigerian poets particularly Remi Raji, Akeem Lasisi, Joe
Ushie and Emmanuel Egya Sule who are examined in this study. The study
argues that although the contemporary poets are not insular to the
poetic influence of other global literatures, the core aesthetics of
their poetry exhibits a visible intertextual dialogic with the poetic
style of Osundare, their immediate forbear. This trend, as the study
argues, instances an intergenerational continuity in the poetry genre.
It also chronicles a paradigmatic shift of intertextual relations from
the vertical angle where the former colonisers' artistic practice serves
as model to the horizontal where the earlier tradition within the
postcolonial space serves as model. The study is a qualitative research
and essentially a content analysis of both the primary and secondary
data which are sourced substantially from the library. It also deploys
the Poststructuralist intertextuality as theoretical framework to probe
the extent of the intertextual relations. The study establishes that to
fully appreciate the recent Nigerian poetry of English expressions there
is the compelling need to study its history of intertextual relation.
In addition to the intertextual dimension, the study proves that the
symbiotic nexus of power and canon formation equally provides the
ontological base for the interrogation of the aesthetic sensibilities of
recent Nigerian poetry in English