Literary depictions of the experience of COVID-19 in a recent Nigerian poetry collection: some reflections on Remi Raji’s Wanderer Cantos

Abstract

ABSTRACT Remi Raji is a Nigerian poet-scholar who got infected by the ravaging coronavirus in December, 2020. This article examines the versification of his experience of COVID-19 disease in the collection entitled Wanderer Cantos. I analyze the relevant poems, drawing attention to how the poet struggled psychically to cope with his physiological ailment. I demonstrate the potential for creative writing to illuminate and humanize medical realities. In a challenge to paradigms that privilege the biological aspects of illness, I emphasize the importance of psychological resources such as optimism, courage and gratitude as a means to survive and recover from COVID-19. I conclude by reflecting on the question of whether readers of Raji’s poems might derive therapeutic benefit, thereby underscoring the idea that the medically ill person who composes original poems, and those who read these poems, may benefit from a bibliotherapy approach.