Literary Aesthetics and Postmodern Representations in Stephen Kekeghe’s Rumbling Sky and Tunde Olusunle’s A Medley Of Echoes

Abstract

With the advent of the 21st century, Nigerian poetry has continued to illustrate exclusive aesthetic representations, complemented by postmodern ideology, that reflect both artistic innovation and social realities. While several studies focus on significant literary and syntactic transformations in contemporary Nigerian poetry, little attention is paid to the negotiation of postmodern realities of the 21st century with new aesthetic techniques in Nigerian poetry. This study, therefore, examines the literary aesthetics and postmodern representations in selected Nigerian poems published in the twenty-first century, with a focus on Stephen Kekeghe’s Rumbling Sky and Tunde Olusunle’s A Medley of Echoes. This paper adopts Russian Formalism which provides a rich foundation for the examination of literary aesthetics and ideology in contemporary Nigerian poetry, complemented by relevant postmodern techniques. The selected poems were subjected to qualitative methodology. Through critical analysis of the usage of fractured syntax, imagery, and free verse, this study underscores the psycho-social fractures caused by systematic failures, oppression, and corruption. It further evaluates the use of postmodern techniques such as lingual hybridity, intertextuality, and visual experimentation to represent the interface between colonial linguistic hierarchies and indigenous epistemologies. The findings reveal that contemporary Nigerian poetry embodies the nature of duality in its assertion of aesthetic autonomy while simultaneously functioning as an ideological discourse of resistance.