Poetics of Tenderness, Nomadic Subjectivity, and Transcultural Affinity in Romeo Oriogun’s The Gathering of Bastards

Abstract

This paper pivots around two key questions: What insights can poetry offer regarding the intimations of tenderness within the context of migrant precarity? What does tenderness tell us about the lives of Africans migrating through irregular routes from Africa to Europe? In addressing these questions, I trace the representation of tenderness in Romeo Oriogun’s The Gathering of Bastards. In illustrating what I describe as Oriogun’s poetics of tenderness, I analyse the following poems: “It Begins with Love,” “Wind Whisperer,” “On Leaving,” and “Train Stop in the Sahara.” In analysing these poems, I do not focus on the discursive “spectacle” of migrant suffering. Instead, I read African subjectivity—beyond ideological and reductive mainstream media representations—through frames of tender affect and relationality to project the humanity of migrants and the complexity of their lives.