POETRY AS A CHANNEL FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AMONG YOUTH IN THE CONTEMPORARY NIGERIAN SOCIETY

Abstract

This study titled, “Poetry as a Channel for Effective Communication and Creativity among Youth in the Contemporary Nigerian Society” investigated the extent youth still use poetry for communication and how effective poetry is as a means of communication and creativity among youth in the contemporary Nigerian society. Emotional communication theory serves the theoretical foothold. The study adopts pragmatic research design which informs the use of mixed research method with focus group discussion (FGD) and social survey as instruments for data collection. A total of 400 undergraduate students in Caleb University, Lagos took part in the study. Findings indicated that most Nigerian youth in the contemporary society failed to engage with poetry regularly in their daily lives because they feel it does not worth the stress. Rather, the youth prefer to express themselves with emojis and other already made digital and AI generated signs and symbols. The study also established that most of the understudied youth think that not all messages can be communicated through poems. The study concludes that although contemporary Nigerian youth know that poetry can help young people develop creativity and confidence, some factors prevented them from either composing their own poems or engaging with that of others including negative comments from social media, complex nature of poems, poor language development, mental laziness, creative blockage between them and their audience, environmental stress and misinterpretations from their audience.