We especially welcome essays that move beyond biography and instead foreground Osundare’s philosophy of poetry, his conception of the poet’s role in society, and his use of Yoruba poetics, ontology, epistemology, and oral traditions to create a people-centred poetics.

While Osundare’s work has often been appraised in terms of generational location, stylistic innovation, and nature writing, we invite contributors to pursue undertheorized axes such as eco-poetics, geocriticism and spatiality, migration and travel, intertextuality and inter-/anti-genre experimentation, and the lyric mode

THIS special issue of the Journal of the African Literature Association focuses on the various literary, scholarly, and political engagements of Niyi Osundare to reexamine and celebrate the contributions of the second/post-independence generation of African poets—including Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, Jack Mapanje, Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie, Tanure Ojaide, Funso Aiyejina, Syl Cheney-Coker, Kiné Kirama Fall, and Ifi Amadiume, among others. Despite their efforts toward liberation from internal and neo-colonialism, the work of these poets has not been as widely anthologised or critically examined as the anticolonial struggles of the earlier generation (Senghor, Diop, Okigbo, Brutus, Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Kunene).

Niyi Osundare embodies his generation’s critical national consciousness—what Frantz Fanon called “self-awareness.” In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon emphasised that “national consciousness, [national self-awareness], which is not nationalism, is alone capable of giving us an international dimension” (2004:179). One of the key sites for the manifestation of such self-awareness in Osundare’s generation was the process of literary production itself, including questions of publishing, publics, and circulation. As Osundare explained in The African Writers’ Handbook: “For, some of us in the second generation of Nigerian writers, in the true spirit of decolonizing African letters, had pledged total loyalty to indigenous publishers, and turned our back on the multinational publishing houses which we saw as active agents in the West’s exploitation of Africa. Heinemann was one of those multinationals” (1999:19).

Placing Osundare’s generation within a broader Black Atlantic frame (Paul Gilroy), we see clear resonances with contemporaneous poets in the Caribbean and South America—Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, Nicolás Guillén, João Cabral de Melo Neto—who, like Osundare, reworked oral traditions and local languages to challenge colonial literary dominance. Osundare’s adaptation of Yoruba oral poetics parallels Brathwaite’s theorisation of “nation language,” situating his work within transoceanic networks of Black poetics. This special issue thus positions Osundare not only as a Nigerian poet, but as a figure central to world literature debates about circulation, modernity, and alternative aesthetic genealogies.

This issue aims to account, in part, for how Osundare earned the appellation of “the people’s poet.” We seek papers on multiple aspects of his writing: the town crier motif, his articulation of critical national self-awareness, his centering of the people as political and aesthetic projects, his performative and oral/traditional aesthetics, and the “cosmopolitan but not quite” character of his later travelling poetry (to rephrase Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture). We especially welcome essays that move beyond biography and instead foreground Osundare’s philosophy of poetry, his conception of the poet’s role in society, and his use of Yoruba poetics, ontology, epistemology, and oral traditions to create a people-centred poetics.

While Osundare’s work has often been appraised in terms of generational location, stylistic innovation, and nature writing, we invite contributors to pursue undertheorized axes such as eco-poetics, geocriticism and spatiality, migration and travel, intertextuality and inter-/anti-genre experimentation, and the lyric mode.

We also welcome comparative articles that situate Osundare alongside contemporaries like Ojaide, Aiyejina, and Cheney-Coker, deepening our understanding of the broader second generation of African poets whose contributions remain underacknowledged in African literary studies.

Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged: How might archival research reveal overlooked dimensions of Osundare’s career? What insights emerge from reading his work through the lens of newsprint and local publishing cultures, new media, translation, or documentary film (The Poets, dir. Chivas DeVinck)? As Osundare himself remarked: “I discovered early enough that learned journals and poetry magazines lack the ease of expression, immediacy of purpose, and general accessibility needed to carry the weight of my social vision…. The newspaper, [in contrast], presents a viable forum. It is accessible, relatively cheap, and widely distributed. Its feedback is almost immediate: one can feel the pulse of those one is trying to touch” (1998:82).

Areas of Interest (guiding questions)

Eco-poetics: How do Osundare’s works conceptualise the relationship between human and non-human worlds, and how might they be read alongside current African environmental criticism? How does his engagement with nature as a second-generation writer differ from the forms of engagement with nature that we see in third-generation African writing and poetry?

Geocriticism and Spatiality: How do place, land, and topography (especially Yoruba landscapes) shape his poetic vision as a second-generation writer?

Politics of Publication and Circulation: What is the significance of Osundare’s choice of newspapers, indigenous publishers, and local publics for African poetics? How do these choices compare with the choices made by first and third-generation African writers as well as choices made by writers from the late colonial period?

Philosophy of the Poet: What do Osundare’s pronouncements and activism (e.g., in ASUU) reveal about his conception of the poet’s and critic’s roles in society? How is his activism as a second-generation creative writer different from or similar to what we see in the poetry of third-generation writers?

Performance: How does his conception of oral/performative aesthetics anticipate or diverge from what we see in contemporary Nigerian spoken-word poetry?

Comparative Poetics: How does Osundare’s work resonate with contemporaries like Ofeimun, Ojaide, Aiyejina, Amadiume, Mũgo, Mapanje, Anyidoho, or Cheney-Coker in shaping second-generation African poetics?

Gender: A surprisingly underexplored dimension of Osundare’s poetry is the question of gender. What critical and theoretical insights might emerge from a sustained engagement with how his poetry constructs, resists or reimagines gender?

Comparative Black Poetics and World Literature: How might Osundare’s generation be read alongside Black poets in the Caribbean and South America—such as Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, Nicolás Guillén, or João Cabral de Melo Neto—within a Black Atlantic and world literature frame that foregrounds shared concerns with orality, circulation, ecological vision, and alternative modernities?

Form and Innovation: What new insights emerge from reading his work through intertextuality, inter-/anti-genre forms, or Yoruba epistemologies?

Interdisciplinary Approaches: How can archives, media studies, or documentary film expand our understanding of Osundare’s oeuvre?

Submission Process & Timeline

Abstracts (300 words max) due: December 15, 2025.

Notification of acceptance: February 15, 2026.

Full papers (7,000–8,000 words) due: August 15, 2026.

All papers will undergo double-blind peer review in accordance with JALA guidelines.

Anticipated publication: early 2027.

Guidelines

Papers must follow MLA 8th edition and JALA formatting.

Submit in two forms: one with author details, one anonymised.

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