sing out...

One of the great pleasures of conferences and festivals and other similar gatherings, even when light on poetry offerings, is the chance to meet and talk with poets and critics. And with the world of "African poetry" being as relatively small and convivial as it is, meeting working poets is not difficult.

Such was the case earlier this year at the African Literature Association's conference: light on the poetic offerings (much to my documented chagrin) but, regardless, not lacking opportunities for me to expand the world (and the word) known to me.

Obi Nwakanma, currently a professor at Truman State University in Missouri, is one such. My first (and, sadly, last of the conference) encounter with his poetry was at the traditional evening reading. And now his latest book -- The Horsemen and other poems -- sits by my side, waiting to be read (and reviewed). But he was gracious enough to share an (an as yet unpublished?) poem with me in the weeks following.

And it's high time to share it more widely.

Fraternal Greetings
By Obi Nwakanma, St. Louis, 5 July 2008

Sunbirds: I see them in flight:
From the hiccups of these years – the blunt
Welcome that dazzles us in our oblique
Dispersal: the radiance, my friends,
These stars from heaven: the woodcutter’s
Bee has sucked our youth from
the mouth; left the sting of its proboscis,
And not the nectar. The sun whirls –
The wind swells. Our mother wails:
Dereliction has wrecked
The futile walls of the barns –
The homeland roils: Lagos is ablaze –
The irrecoverable spittle shines
The glazed dial a little too glazed; the florin
With Cleopatra’s head; the one I
Recovered from the flea market in Marakech –
Paid for my Arab bride, whose son
Wears my scar. But I am lost –
We are all lost. We are the horizon
Sneering salutes to these frenzied borders:
And I say, damn you all, my friends,
Exiles, communists, flower children:
Damn you all, with fraternal greetings.

After too long a delay I am looking forward to rereading this offering -- which reads to me as part of a long tradition of contemporary Nigerian poetry that looks simultaneously both out and inward (relative to the poet) and laments -- against his earlier collection.

In the meantime, there is an interview with Nwakanma from 2002 available online (launching the Sentinel Poetry Movement). Interestingly, he notes in it that he's completed the manuscript for The Horsemen a full five years before it was published.

"New" voices have often echoed elsewhere for a long, long time...

a poet comes home

Last Addendum (30 April 2012): Last? Well... maybe? Probably? NEXT has been gone for some time. Hasn't been producing for some time, at least (and hasn't paid employees for even longer). The website appears to be gone which means none of the links below work. Maybe it will come back; who knows. It does suggest one reason I am still partial to print...

Last Friday's email blast from NEXT, the still relatively new Nigerian daily paper, announced "Niyi Osundare writes for us on Sunday / Read his poems every first Sunday of the month in The Lagos Review".

And here it is, "September".

It's good to see Osundare publishing in the papers again (his collection, Songs of the Season, came out of an earlier stint with The Nigerian Tribune). The poem itself is vintage Osundare, and while the closing stanza is a little heavy-handed for my taste, the "ginger-footed" month and the "lingering stench of haram wars" are marvelous constructions.

It's not the first time that Osundare appeared in NEXT. There is also "Lily" from 31 July 2009. And uncovering it led me to Femi Adedeji's "Blighted" and Dave Chukwuji's "Wetin".

It's good to see yet another publication, accessible online, worldwide, taking poetry, and poets, seriously.

Addendum (2 December 2009): Osundare's contributions continue -- with "October" and "November". His voice is, as almost always, strong, confident, and recognizable in these two; and to paraphrase and perhaps bastardize one reader's comment, his poetry is rarely out of reach but can carry you a long way gone. Perhaps the most striking lines from these two: "A liquid glimmer rakes the roofs / of suffocating cities" -- pop!

My one wish? That there was a page on the NEXT website linking to the run of poems: a "Niyi Osundare Poem-a-Month" page. As it is, readers have to rely on the rather scattershot search tool available on the site. Or am I missing something?

Addendum (8 February 2010): Not going to wait on NEXT any longer and have added a box to the sidebar on the right here, linking to each of Osundare's monthly poems...