#SÒRÒSÓKÈ RHYTHM: WHEN STREET POETRY BRAVES STORMY CITIES, SPEAKS TO POWER IN SEASON OF ANGST AND POLITICAL TURMOIL.

Abstract

This work examines the creative impetus and social context of the #EndSARS-#Sorosoke art form in recent Nigerian literary experience that was birthed in the month of October 2020, as a novel offering to the literary catalogue of Nigeria’s creative ferment. The poems in the collection serve as vivid witness to the period of the stormy saga of the #EndSARS protest movement, which climaxed the ennui of the Nigerian youths’ bottled-up, prolonged frustration, disillusionment and angst. The outburst was to engulf the Nigerian state, provoked the bloody scene at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, resulting in a devastating effects with indelible dent on the body politics of the nation. Although the foreboding situation was eventually brought under control after much ado by the fidgety, flabbergasted ruling federal government, yet, the spirit of that moment breaths in the rhythm of #Sorosoke poetry. To immortalize this historic moment, there was a rousing symphony of multi-tonal, multi-vocal poetic events that was incubated in the midst of this agonizing moment and the aftermath which added to mediate that tragic phase that in the process immortalize the heroism of the martyrs of that movement and also pass to posterity that historic epoch. In this work, the #EndSARS-derived ‘sorosoke poetry’ are examined critically and analyzed to highlight the tempo of actions and implications, convictions, resolves and statements that are embodied in the #Sorosoke art form that has created a new literary consciousness and fresh perspective in Nigerian literature.