<b>APPRECIATING OSUNDARE’S </b><b><i>VILLAGE VOICES</i></b><b> WITHIN THE SCHOLARLY REMIT OF LINGUOPOETICS</b>

This presentation dwells on how Osundare stylistically exploits certain linguistic resources in his anthology, <i>Village Voices,</i> to communicate meaning and paint the gloomy picture of the poor masses in society. It is observed that the poet-speaker successfully does this by utilizing the scholarly principles of linguopoetics. Therefore, the stylistically marked linguistic units in the select poems which include some fore-grounded morphological and syntactic elements in the anthology are analysed to determine their communicative functions ,for these stylistically marked units of language help to draw the reader’s attention to the relationship between the politicians and the masses who vote them into power, but get alienated by their representatives in government. To justify the research approach adopted in this presentation and for the purpose of analysis of the select poems, this work draws upon the framework of Lipgart (1994, 1996 &amp; 1997) and Halliday (1964) who posit that to approach a work of poetry is better done through language, and that it is the responsibility of Linguistics to analyse and describe texts. The paper rounds off by suggesting to aspiring poets to employ the scholarly method of linguopoetics in order to make poetry attractive and for the artist to endear himself to the contemporary audience, a style most literary artists gloss over, but only masterly exploited by “People’s Poets” like Osundare and few others.