Our preoccupation with our existence in a hostile, insupportable environment has since acquired all the deadening effects of a habit. So caught up are we in our existential realities that we seem to have lost that sublime sense of wonder and curiosity of a child to see that there are a million other things and more, right here in our environment to excite us into serious poetry, and that these things are so diverse and multitudinous that a whole generation of brilliant poets cannot exhaust them.

I believe if the present generation of poets is to make a complete break - if that’s possible -  from the Osundare generation, one of its hallmarks will have to be in the comprehensiveness of its themes rather than style. Right now, that meditative spirit - a bequeath of the Soyinka generation - that sees and questions everything almost with child-like curiosity, has been thoroughly exorcised from our poetry, and what is left now is almost public speech in which one sees all the élan, éclat, flair and purple of a highly trained public man. The real man seems to have receded into the shadows. I think one comes before the other. I think it desirable, that order be maintained not only in the evolution of ourselves as poets but also in that of the society at large.

Now is expiation of what I have just enunciated above, let me at this juncture come out more boldly with what I have been crudely endeavouring to say. I’m sorry, the comments I'm going to make may be construed as prescriptive or even provocative. I assure you I have no such intention. However, time being the ablest critic, and alone has the prerogative of the final judgment, shall judge.

And I pray, I am I wrong. I have discovered that each time I have taken a journey through the vast and hallowed hinterlands of African literature, I have always arrived at the same destination, namely: that the substantial part of our literature has been characterized by preoccupations with man only as a cultural and socio-political entity within the context of his times and environment. In other words, our literature has barely proceeded beyond depictions of men as conditioned by their times to true portrayal of man. Our literary productions have been more about man as he ought to be -according to fashionable ideas of his times - and less as he is all times.

That sense of eternal human values which should pervade our depictions of the customs, norms, attitudes and passions of our time, is at the minimum in the larger part of our literature, especially in our poetry, except of course, in some of the works of the greatest of our poets/writers. Man is much more deeply varied than he has been portrayed yet in our literature. His inner life, struggles, psychological and spiritual battles, his dilemmas, despairs, dreams, and hopes, his sexual traumas and guilt, his vices and weaknesses, his follies and conceits have not been portrayed adequately and with enough intensity in our literature.

Every generation of writers in seeking to tell, interpret and interrogate certain truths of its own times as it perceives them, must bear in mind that there is no ultimate truth to be found anywhere, not least in ideas or ideology, except in man. He is the only truth worth telling, the truth which he denies but that which can elevate him. Being an externally enduring entity, it is no wonder we find him in all the world’s greatest poetry. Man is the measure of all literatures.

This might seem an immense task and labour to impose on our contemporary poets. But at least, we can start from somewhere. It is true we are still young and yet to attain our full maturity. We need not chastise ourselves for this. We shall get there if we work hard at it. We have two great generations behind us from which we can learn and take our departures; the one with its preoccupations with its own private worlds, the other with the public. I can see some Hegelian synthesis somewhere.

It is time to set the process underway by trying to display more fidelity to the realities of our times, language, mores, attitudes and temperaments, to our rootless peregrinative existence -which ironically may well be to our advantage - ideas and convictions while maintaining the naturalness of our thoughts and feelings. And other things will be added unto us.

Having said all these, I must concede that there are already some lights to be glimpsed on the horizon. Some of our poets are beginning to discover their true voice. Obi Nwakanma is one of such poets. Helon Habila is another, though he seems now to have abandoned poetry. Tolu Ogunlesi, a new entrant and Ebereonwu (of the blessed memory) are worthy of mention, and some of the female poets I mentioned earlier. But I must make a particular mention of Uche Nduka. He is the first of our contemporary poets to have found his true voice. When I look at the almost total critical neglect of this remarkable poet, I cannot help but be filled with despair as an upcoming poet.

This is a poet with all the markings of a world-class poet, except its acclaim. But it is not the critics that shall celebrate this man. It is the next generations of poets who shall find a great deal to learn from him. For the time being, he and to a lesser degree with some very of his contemporaries, have set off a bang!