“The People’s Poet & The Second Wave: JALA Dedicates Special Issue To Niyi Osundare’s Radical Reimagination Of African Poetry”

IN a landmark recognition of one of Africa’s most influential poetic voices, the Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA) has announced a forthcoming special issue titled “The People’s Word, The World’s Poetics: Niyi Osundare and the Rearticulation of Second-Generation African Poetry.”

Co-edited by Olabode Ibironke and Tosin Gbogi, the issue revisits the revolutionary literary, political, and aesthetic contributions of Niyi Osundare — the poet often described as “the people’s voice in the people’s language.” It also seeks to reevaluate a generation of post-independence African poets who carried the torch of cultural decolonization beyond the nationalist fervor of their predecessors.

Reclaiming a Generation’s Voice

While the first generation of African poets — including Léopold Senghor, Christopher Okigbo, and Wole Soyinka — is widely anthologized, Osundare’s contemporaries such as Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, Jack Mapanje, Tanure Ojaide, Funso Aiyejina, and Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie have often been overshadowed in mainstream African literary studies.
The special issue seeks to correct that imbalance, foregrounding how this second wave of writers turned poetry into a site of political resistance and cultural renewal.

Osundare, in particular, represents what Frantz Fanon once called “critical national consciousness” — a creative awakening that redefined the relationship between poetry, politics, and the people. His commitment to using indigenous languages, oral performance, and accessible publishing platforms challenged both colonial literary hierarchies and local elitism.

From the Page to the People

For Osundare, poetry was never confined to the printed page. He famously wrote that “learned journals and poetry magazines lack the ease of expression needed to carry the weight of my social vision.”
Instead, he took poetry to the streets — through newspapers, public readings, and radio performances — ensuring that his verses reached the people he wrote for. This approach, the editors note, offers new perspectives for understanding African poetics beyond Western publishing frameworks.

Black Atlantic Resonances

The issue also situates Osundare within a global Black literary conversation, drawing parallels with Caribbean and Latin American poets like Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, Nicolás Guillén, and João Cabral de Melo Neto.
Like these contemporaries, Osundare fused orality, ecology, and local linguistic rhythms to construct what scholars call a “transoceanic poetics of resistance.” His adaptation of Yoruba oral traditions mirrors Brathwaite’s concept of “nation language,” positioning him within a larger decolonial aesthetic movement.

Expanding the Critical Lens

The editors are inviting essays that explore new interpretive directions in Osundare’s work — including eco-poetics, geo-criticism, intertextuality, gender, performance, and transnational circulation. They emphasize a need to move beyond biography to engage with Osundare’s philosophical and artistic vision: his belief in the poet as a social conscience and in poetry as a communal act.

Comparative studies are also encouraged — particularly those placing Osundare alongside fellow second-generation poets like Ojaide, Aiyejina, and Cheney-Coker, or in dialogue with the “third generation” of contemporary spoken-word artists.

Submission Details

• Abstracts (max 300 words): due 15 December 2025

• Notification of acceptance: 15 February 2026

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

• Expected publication: Early 2027

• Submission contacts:

  • Olabode Ibironke (oi26@rutgers.edu)

  • Tosin Gbogi (gbogi001@umn.edu)

  • Subject line: “JALA – Niyi Osundare Special Issue.”

By centering Osundare’s legacy, this issue of JALA aims not only to honor a poet but to spark a renewed dialogue about what it means to write for — and with — the people in a world still shaped by colonial histories and unequal global voices.