Abstract:
The poetic collection, Pilgrim Foot: A Collection of Poems, was published by Rev. Fr Prof. A. N. Akwanya in 2005 to mark the silver jubilee of his priestly ordination. It is a ninety-three-paged work divided into six parts with a total of forty-one poems. This research seeks to unveil the fact that the journey of the pilgrim, which is an allusion to the Biblical journey of the three wise men to Bethlehem in order to witness the birth of the savior, Jesus Christ, is not the same. Ironically, the journey of the present pilgrim, who is the speaking voice in the poems, does not take the reader into a holy land but into the heart of a failed state and a dysfunctional family which is made possible as a result of failed leadership. The voice unveils to the reader a panorama and a plethora of dispossessed human beings that inhabit the state and the family systems. This study shall also examine the literary language with which the poet clothes and foregrounds his thematic preoccupation with the issue of dispossession, using nineteen poems randomly chosen from the six parts that the poetic collection is made of.
