The latest creative effort of Nigerian poet, Akeem Lasisi entitled Wonderland Eleleture (nd) is a compendium in which poems are rendered variously as written texts, audio songs and VCD performances. This appropriation of multiple media to “perform” the poems offers a variety of consumption options and demonstrates how the art can be made to absorb technology in order to enlarge its audience by appealing to generations that are increasingly becoming apathetic to the written word. In simple terms the future of poetry, if it seeks to have mass appeal, lies not in writing it but in how the written word can be technologized for a wider and more inclusive consumption.
In the following essay, I engage the way(s) that Lasisi has crafted his performance as part of a burgeoning re-imagination of poetry and the poetic that can bring the written word to life in newer and more appealing formats in order to activate multi-sensual reflections on it. I argue also that Lasisi is rethinking the methodology of publishing by giving the art of poetry a more nimble foot for transnational and generational voyages.