Abstract
This essay analyses recent poetry in Nigeria, especially poetry produced after 1988, the year in which the anthology Voices from the Fringe, edited by Harry Garuba, announced the emergence of a new generation of Nigerian poets. One of the peculiarities of this poetry is its formation and deployment of animal images, specifically the use of ugly, destructive, carnivorous animals as metaphors in the construction of an oppressor-figure. The poetry is linked to its immediate environment and the oppressor-figure is frequently seen to emblematize the irrational, anti-human, cruel military dictators that oppressed Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s. Concentrating on selected representative poems, the essay identifies and analyses this use of bestial imagery, concluding that poetry has been a form of cultural production that has played a part in dethroning military oppression in Nigeria.
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