[Goodwin is an Australian author and educator. In the following review, he praises Saro-Wiwa's evocation of war-time Nigeria in Songs in a Time of War.]

In this modest contribution to Nigerian poetry in English [Songs in a Time of War], Ken Saro-Wiwa writes chiefly about the political manipulation and human waste of warfare. The war references are to the Biafran war, during which Saro-Wiwa served as a Federal administrator. Though these poems lack the immediacy and vivid particularity of J. P. Clark's war poems, they do convey a constant longing for silence and for the soft-breathing life of peaceful nighttime, as well as a sense of open landscape with a slightly menacing quality.

"The Escape" is a poem detailing the author's flight from the Delta region to Lagos as the Biafran troops advanced westward in September 1967. Among its images of fear and apprehension are one of the day hung out in front like a curtain, "A drawn-out horizon taut with uncertainty." During the river voyage he comes upon a scene in which

     White birds stood on stumps in mid-stream
     Silent and watchful …

In the same poem, the slightly archaic (Edwardian or First-World-War) diction that Saro-Wiwa uses can be sensed in "Naval guns boom as of yore." His point here is that, though his repetition of colonial experience might encourage a sense of déjà vu, in a civil war within an independent country "the issues are far greater."

Despite Saro-Wiwa's abhorrence of war and his concentration on the sorrow and pity of it all, he cannot resist some condemnation of Biafra's leaders, particularly in "Epitaph for Biafra":

     Didn't they test the hardness of the egg
     On the skin of their teeth
     Before dashing it against the rocks?

It is in such images that he manages to rise above the prosaic and declaratory quality of much of the verse. His best poems have a sensory quality that vivifies them, whether it is the "white balls of fire" that "Ascend the sky at dusk" in a war poem or the witty image of the "Tired and breathless spaceman" who. remembering an encounter with a courtesan, is able to "Toil on for the pleasures / Of the final splashdown."

The last poem in this small volume is a long satire in pidgin. In it the words "Nigeria" and "confusion" appear as a refrain, as Saro-Wiwa expresses both lament for and condemnation of Nigeria's openness to exploitation, corruption, and the temptation to borrow (both fiscally and culturally). Addressing the country, he says

     Nigeria, you too like borrow borrow
     You borrow money, cloth you dey borrow
     You borrow motor, you borrow aeroplane
     You dey borrow chop, you borrow drink
     Sotey you borrow anoder man language….

It is a poem written in sorrow, not in resignation or hopelessness, for he has faith in the natural resources of the country and he does not despair of all the people, for

     Oh yes, som Nigerian pickin get sense
     And better go follow dem all.