[New-Poetry] WorldPo: Nigeria

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://allafrica.com/stories/200712031006.html
Nigeria: Writing and the Nation - ANA Prizes and Canon Making


?
Vanguard (Lagos)

2 December 2007
Posted to the web 3 December 2007

Obi Nwakanma
Lagos

TWO weeks ago, the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) concluded its annual convention at Owerri, the heartland city of the East. The various prizes administered by ANA were also announced and the winners proclaimed.


My own collection of poems, The Horsemen & Other Poems was on the shortlist for both the ANA/Cadbury Prize and the ANA/Gabriel Okara Prize. My collection did not win the prizes, both of which went to Hyginus Ekwuazi's Love Apart. I have not read Ekwuazi's winning collection of poems, but I feel certain that it deserves the prizes, and I congratulate Ekwuazi, who has worked mostly in film, but who now has shown his paces as a poet of considerable ability and perhaps even significance.This is what the ANA prizes are all about: the affirmation of the work of the contemporary Nigerian literary imagination, and maintenance of the canon of Nigerian literature. I will come back to the meaning of the Nigerian canon shortly, but I would like to draw attention to developments preceding the announcement of the prize, which for me, and I'm sure for many others, has the potential of detracting from the significance of the Nigerian prize.

?
This specifically has to do with the poet, Niyi Osundare's sudden withdrawal of his book, one of the three on the shortlist for consideration in the ANA/Cadbury Prize.


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