Social realism in the poetry of Philip Obioma Chinedu Umeh and Sly –Cheney Coker

Abstract

Literature is a product of the society and the writers as watchdogs of their various societies recreate and expose the ills engulfing them. The paper focuses on social realism on the selected poems of Philip Obioma Chinedu Umeh and Sly Cheney Coker espousing how they have used their poetics in elucidating the relationships existing between the privilege few and the unprivileged majority in the society. This paper adopts Marxism as the basic theoretical underpinning. It has also been observed that the poetry of these writers acts as a driving force in exposing what Charles Bressler describes elsewhere as the “dominant class”. Social realism in this context is a realistic depiction in art of contemporary life, as a means of socio-political comment. It is also viewed as an artistic creation of the life of the common man in relation to that of the bourgeoisies. The poetry of Umeh and Coker is one area of research that have not received enough critical attention in spite of the visible predatory bites of their poems, especially in demystifying and reforming the ambiguous vacuum created in the society by this insatiable lust for the country’s national cake and complacency of the leaders toward the inadequacies of the led.