The Representation of Religion in J.J. Ekwere’s Poetry and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies

The lyric poem as a vehicle for exploring the individual's relationship to the divine is a shared concern of J.J. Ekwere's Efik-inflected Anglophone verse and Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies, and a comparative reading of both poets illuminates how different theological and cosmological traditions produce structurally similar poetic responses to spiritual doubt and transcendence. This study examined how Ekwere's poetry draws on the spiritual cosmology of the Efik people of Cross River State and Rilke's elegies engage with a post-Christian European theology of angels and the human condition. A comparative theology of poetry methodology drawing on phenomenological philosophy and African religious studies was applied. Both poets use the lyric mode to dramatise the self's sense of its own insufficiency before the immensity of the spiritual world, and both construct images of threshold beings (angels in Rilke, ancestral spirits in Ekwere) that mediate between the human and the sacred. The analysis revealed that while Rilke's elegies move toward a resigned acceptance of human finitude as itself a form of dignity, Ekwere's verse maintains a more active communal relationship with the spiritual world, rooted in the specific ritual and cultural practices of the Efik community. The study concludes that comparing these poets demonstrates that lyric theology is a global literary mode that takes radically different forms depending on the cosmological traditions it draws upon. The pairing is recommended for poetry and religion courses at universities in the South South zone of Nigeria, where Ekwere's cultural context is most accessible.