Scars Across Boundaries: An Exploration of Covid-19 Musings in Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s Broken Bodies, Damaged Souls and Other Poems (2022)

Abstract

No doubt, the global experience of the Covid-19 pandemic has continued to have diverse impacts on all aspects of life across the world today. However, while literary artists have continued to reflect on the impacts of the pandemic on their works, the experience has turned a paradoxical leap that shows an evolution of a budding literary subgenre on Covid-19. This paper engages with “Songs in the Time of Covid-19 Pandemic”, one of the sections in Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s latest poetry collection, Broken Bodies, Damaged Souls and Other Poems (2022). The paper explores how the poet has used her personal experiences in the period of the lockdown to project the common experience of humanity across the world. While the paper has deployed the postcolonial theory as its tool of inquiry, the author advances the familiar query that has been raised against the theory by scholars on the affinity of space and boundaries. Arising from the global experience that has been domesticated in the selected poems, the paper concludes by emphasising the social relevance of literature which parallels the advances in science committed to the reordering of the world. Keywords: Covid-19 Pandemic, Personal experience, Universal Experience, Postcoloniality, Modern Nigeria Poetry