Factional realities in Remi Raji’s Gather My Blood Rivers of Song

Abstract

This paper explores the transformative vision of the Nigerian poet, Remi Raji from imaginative mooring in his earlier works to factional realities in Gather My Blood Rivers of Song published in 2009. In some poems in this collection, Raji embraces factional realities as he grapples with the narration of actual existence in Nigeria. This signifies a movement away from the speculative construct of the imagination as he presents the tangible properties of events, not as history, but the facts in reality. This differentiates him from other writers who merely re-echo or document events. Based on the materialist frame of reference presented in some of the poems in this collection, Raji is able to enact plausible narrations that have identifiable referentiality through which he guides his poetic presentation of actual human existence.

Keywords: factional realism, imagination, Nigerian poetry, Remi Raji, representative constructs