Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Working on archival and literary evidence of Biafran war poetry collection abandoned by Heinemann at the final stage of publication, this paper investigates the way in which Heinemann functioned as a technology of neo-imperial power that aimed to bury significant Biafran perspectives about the war.

Paper long abstract:

This paper pays attention to the politics of publishing Biafran voices by the British owned Heinemann Educational Books in its African Writers Series during the civil war era. Working on the premise of archival and literary evidence of an abandoned poetry collection edited by Ulli Beier, and written by fourteen Igbo poets on their war experience, the paper argues that Heinemann functioned as a technology of neo-imperial power that aimed to undermine significant Biafran perspectives about the war. Relying on postcolonial publishing theory and archival-literary research method, the paper investigates the curious circumstances surrounding the treatment of the collection as forbidden discourse. It analyses a selection of these poems alongside significant archival records available in Heinemann African Writers Series Archive at the Special Collections Centre, University of Reading, which include editorial reviews, minutes of meetings, and correspondences between the publisher and the authors to show the intimate manner through which the Biafran writers engaged the Biafran experience. Offering a nuanced analytic account of the ethics and editorial politics surrounding neo-imperial publishing, it shows the way Nigerian ethnic politics and British interest influenced Heinemann’s editorial and publishing policies and decisions about Biafra and how these in turn sought to bury significant Biafran voices and stories.