The performance poetry is one of the traditional performance art forms that literary artists have incorporated into the written mould. Though written performance poetry does not benefit from the physical accompaniment of gestures, dance, and other facial expressions, which the oral form enjoys, the expressive rendering of language in the written performance poetry has almost the same effect as the latter. In Performance poetry, the artist employs his creative ingenuity to educate and entertain the audience with imagistic expressions that address social, economic and political challenges in the community. Akeem Lasisi recreates the traditional essence of performance poetry in his WONDERLAND POETRY through dialogic performance poems in the collection, which are deployed as a satire of the Nigerian society. This paper examined the satire in the written performance poetry and concluded that performance poetry is a literary genre which is channeled towards the ridicule of untoward conducts in the society. In written performance poetry, the readers experience entertainment through artistic use of words and, at the same time, get informed, enlightened and sensitised about the happenings in their society.
Citation: Toyin Shittu (2022) Performance as Metaphor for Social Activism: An Assessment of Akeem Lasisi’s : WONDERLAND POETRY, European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, Vol.10, No.7, pp.121-136
Keywords: Akeem Lasisi’s, Metaphor, Performance, Wonderland poetry, social activism
