THE PAST by Eberenna Utobo

THE PAST by Eberenna Utobo

by | May 16, 2017 | POEMS

THE PAST

by Eberenna Utobo

—01

…if your ears would close,

and your thoughts listened…

…for that which lies behind

…still lies as beautiful

 

…oh, the thoughts of the thirteen

…blossoming with fruits at thirty

….of the perfection to build from thirteen

…and it would ripe at thirty.

—02

…in your tender palms,

…you could grasp the sun

…your slender feet on ground

…you could walk with the gods.

 

…Heroes of the future

…where the voices in your head

…you believed in the future

…for you made YOU the head.

—03

…your hands were your lovers

…they fabricated your desires

…your dreams excitedly hovers

…you are on top as you desire

 

…so little results, your tender efforts

…yet so potential, so big

…for your mind is that of a maker

…then, in time, the world you’ll bless.

 

—04

 

…you looked up at Him

…with great hope and resolve.

…you had no doubt in Him

…your plans has His markings involved.

 

…the pits and potholes of life

…a thing of fiction to you.

…keenly, your mind designs life.

…the life appealing to you.

—05

…then, then, you were twenty-one

…the gap and weed came.

…then, then you lose ’em one by one

…the model you once became.

 

…your eyes see a little ahead

…yet so dark so fruitless.

…you drift, waiting to be led

…yet no hand came, so hopeless.

—06

…chaos, disapointed, lost

…morning, afternoon, night.

…that light only a glow in thought

…rarely, rarely in the night.

 

…hey, child, you left something behind.

…for far ahead you would need him.

….hey, son, you left YOU behind.

…for far ahead would love him.

 

 

—07

 

…listen to your tender past

…you created you in the past.

…you employed your mind in the past

…your future you’d build with the past.

 

…the pits and potholes of life

…a thing of fiction to you.

…keenly, your mind designs life.

…the life appealing to you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graduated from the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering FUTO, Utobo Eberenna T., nicknamed Cowboy, developed an unusual flair for writing. The writer is an ardent lover of Electrical and Electronic world, and yet has a powerful imagination that he loves to put down in writing.

His articles have been published in magazines and he was the Editor in Chief for the Peacock 2nd edition; a magazine of the Electrical and Electronic Department, FUTO. Having written a good number of short stories and very few poems, this is the first of his write up that is published in a professional website.

He is a thinker, a doer and loves to read. For him, writing is a thing of the soul. It is a way of letting the soul speak through the pen, listening to the inner mind and letting it pour out its mysteries through the ink. He believes in the divinity of the human soul and its infinite intelligence. He can draw inspiration from everything around him and is a person that has the ability to see beyond what the eyes is gazing upon.

He is a social person, funny and wonderful person to have a deep and open conversation with.

The Past

by Eberenna Utobo | KD Audio poems

REFUGE by Kareem Tawakalit

REFUGE by Kareem Tawakalit

by | May 10, 2017 | NON FICTION

NON-FICTION

Refuge by Kareem Tawakalit

” The difference is made with the people that flank a person in all the pictures life can emulate. The ink of time will scribble on the slates of our lives, turning the future into the present. ”

I could see the happiness on his face. It was evident, like the brightness of the sun when it rises from the East.
It has always been like this, you know. On the precipice of the dawn of a new year, my dad was always in a good mood. He laughed unendingly, dancing and smiling like someone who was presented with a ticket to a dream.
He would grab me, my Mom or my sister.
“Omolara, come. Let’s see if you can keep up with your old man.”
Before we could finish the revolution of a complete breath, he would spin us around, leaving us in puddles of laughter. It was not the kind of laughter that just randomly exited from a person. Rather, it was a kind that started, soft and almost unconsciously. It rose from the very core, warming from the inside out before it bursts out in colours of happiness. The motions of his legs were the funniest; the different ways he artfully jiggled them to mime the beat of whatever oldie he had played.
It wasn’t just the undiluted fun, there were to-do lists to be checked and cross-checked, cooking to be done and tons of errands to be run, all the while implementing creative ways to circumvent the ‘banga’-throwing boys and girls actively sniffing out victim material.
My nuclear family isn’t a large one. But there was always an abundance of human bodies on the 31st of every December. There were friends turned family, people whose realities had somehow become intertwined with ours to the extent we had multiple parents, and our parents had multiple children.
This life we’re given was a tabula rasa at its inception. As the tides of time take us on its journey through space, our experiences will, to an extent, shape the persons that we will become. Each of us, wayfarers on planet Earth, will experience life in most of the varying forms that make up its fabric; the good, the bad and the ugly.
The difference is made with the people that flank a person in all the pictures life can emulate. The ink of time will scribble on the slates of our lives, turning the future into the present. It will bring with it a bit of pain, laughter, dreams turned realities, disappointments, joy and sadness. Life is a rollercoaster that will take us round the spectrum of emotions or at least close.
This is a reality that none of us can escape, and yet one that invariably makes the knots tighten, the more life is unravelled. I feel that knot loosening its grip the older I get. The advancement in years came with a herald of appreciating family, the connections I didn’t choose, ones made without my assent or dissent, but those that have consistently patched me up even when I didn’t think I deserved it.
The family is a promise that we will always have an umbrella, a shade. That whether the sun is blazing hot, threatening to melt us in its fierceness or the storm rages around, determined to cast us away into nothingness; it will never be just us against the elements.
It is a promise that we will always have an anchor in the storms of life; a promise that is reinforced day after day, in the little seemingly unimportant ways and the immense ones.
Words do not paint a deserving enough picture. They can’t. Defining the joy that family represents, is like to trying to put words into an artist’s soul and the peculiar ways with which a canvass is defined.
One can only try.
Family, my family, is a benediction that I will never be able to adequately quantify; it is just one I am forever grateful for.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kareem, Tawakalit Olawumi holds a degree in Microbiology from the University of Ibadan. The medley of words to become something tangible and alive has been a constant thread in the fabric of her life.

She’s in love with Africa, and the people that inhabit her.

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INTERVIEW TO BE FELA’S NEW ASSISTANT by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

INTERVIEW TO BE FELA’S NEW ASSISTANT by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

by | Apr 10, 2017 | NIGERIAN POEMS, POEMS

INTERVIEW TO BE FELA’S NEW ASSISTANT

by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

—01
your tunes have parted me into broken waters
searching for their own name in the tongue of
Oya, the goddess whose wisdom can pacify
the thirst of a sojourner on a quest for history,
for the lineage of family, for the home of memory

 

—02
we have heard it said time and again
that those who do not leave their houses
never find their homes, for the origin
of my blood is planets and footsteps away
and your tunes, which shattered me into pieces
have brought me back into one cacophonous cohesion
—03
let me be your disciple, your only family,
my friends say I deify you but no one understands
that when you have been broken once by a song,
only the minstrel can make you whole again.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola is a poet, essayist and writer of fiction. He writes from Ibadan, Nigeria. His writings border on the themes of unease, racism, colonialism, terror and all things familiar to the black folk. He describes his art as that specialized literary alchemy which aims to extract beauty from the frail commonplaceness of words.

 

His experimental works have appeared or are shortcoming on such platforms as Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Bombay Review, Lunaris Review, African Writer, Sprinng.org, Authorpedia, Kreative Diadem, Parousia Magazine and Sampad International Journal. He was the 2016 recipient of the Albert Jungers Poetry

 

‘Give yourself time to grow and learn’ – Interview with Samuel Ugbechie

‘Give yourself time to grow and learn’ – Interview with Samuel Ugbechie

by | Mar 24, 2017 | THE TABLE TALK

TABLE TALK

‘Give yourself time to grow and learn’ – Interview with Samuel Ugbechie

This edition of Table Talk is an educative interview with award-winning poet, Samuel Ugbechie, who authored a compendium of poems that won the 2016 Fred Holland Poetry Collection Award.

Asides his artistic side that churns out myriads of amazing poems, he is also a software developer who never hides his love for basketball.

Join this interesting walk and learn from the story of an architect of beautiful literary pieces.

Who’s Samuel Ugbechie?
Samuel is a writer who works as a Software Developer.
Can you please share your childhood memories?
I grew up with computers around me. Then I did a lot of sports growing up. Then I fell in love with writing and started to shake off a couple of activities.
When did you start writing?
 Maybe age 13 or 14. 
What inspires you to write?
The beauty of language. Its shape. Its wide and wild literary possibilities, widened even more, sometimes, by how I feel within—joy, loss, longing, etc.
Apart from poetry, is there any other genre you write?
Yea; essays and fiction.

 

Samuel Ugbechie

Photo accessed via Facebook

In the literary circle, who are your mentors /role models and favourite authors?
It’s a long list. Mark Tredinnick, Colum McCann, Virginia Woolf, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Wright, Barry Lopez, Wole Soyinka, Annie Dillard, etc.
What motivated you to start writing poetry, considering that poetry appears to be far apart from your academic pursuit as an engineer?
Love. I think love is a great motivator. I fell in love with language from listening to music as a young teen, particularly rap and country. And what stood out from those songs, I felt then, was how the singers said what they said—it was poetry, metaphors, similes, rhythm, etc. I knew then that I was hearing poetry. So I started trying to write what I was hearing. And I started to search for poems to read—the kind of poetry I felt I was hearing in the music I loved. So good music didn’t just send me to more music, it also sent me to searching for poems that were written on the page.
Many writers have, in the past, made remarks about how winning a prize has made them more conscious of their craft because of the high expectations that follow. Have you felt this way after winning the prestigious Fred Holland Poetry Collection Award?  
Yea, I may know that feeling. You win a prize or get into a long or shortlist and then there’s this hovering thought that you need to live up to some expectations. Well, I immediately dismiss thoughts like that. I do not allow a thought with that kind of content to motivate, inspire or put some form of pressure on me. I want to be driven more from within than without. Love, joy, loss, longing, etc. These things, from my experience, go well with the writing process than imagined peer pressure or anything like it.

You can follow this link to view the collection of poems that won Ugbechie the 2016 Fred Holland Poetry Collection Award.

” Give yourself time to grow and learn, and the time you must give is lifelong. So when you read, then write. Accept all the rejections and acceptances in good faith. And keep going. ”

It’s a widespread opinion that Nigerian writers are not accorded the full honour they deserve. What’s your take on this?
I am not sure of that. I think Nigerian writing and writers seem to be doing commendably well. And I think the respect and honor are there.
Do you think our publishing industry is doing well in promoting the works of Nigerian writers? 
Yea, I think so. I know a bit of what it takes to run a business in Nigeria. What our publishing industry has achieved so far, considering where we were years ago, is commendable. However, we’re not there yet. It’s a long road. So there is always room for improvement.
What is the most attractive thing about poetry that makes you keep writing?
It’s how it leaves you after you’ve read it. How it rubs off on you. It’s the music and language. It’s the way, as Mark Tredinnick would say, it tells us our secrets while keeping its own. It’s how it says with the finest and fewest words, what many of us yearn to say or would have said if we knew how, if we had the right words. Its universality is beautiful. 
Could you give a description of your writing process or routine?
I love mornings for poetry. But the mornings don’t stay long or never come. Something else often takes them away—a pending software task, or some other pending stuff. So I try to write everyday whenever I’m free—it’s either I’m writing a new poem, completing a poem that wants to linger more before it reveals the other parts of itself, or adding to or editing an ongoing work of prose.

Samuel Ugbechie, winner of 2016 Fred Holland Poetry Collection.

Photograph accessed via Facebook

How has geographic travel played a role in your writing life?
I think life experience in total, of which traveling is part, adds something tangible to one’s writing life. It gives you names of birds, of places, of stones, of trees, the shape of different memories, and within, it gives you the compassion and nostalgia you may need for a writing piece someday.  
How would you describe your own work, your style, and your sensibilities?
I strive to be the student of the many beautiful writers out there. I try to be the product of the many tricks or techniques I find in their works, some of which I find I haven’t forgotten. So I go through different routes in my writing. Talking about subject matter, though, in poetry, I find myself influenced a lot by nature; by family, landscape, love, loss. In fiction, because I approach a part of it differently, my subjects could vary more. 
What is your advice to young writers?
Read on. Reading is a lifelong activity. Invest your time and money in the craft. Don’t just read poems and stories. Read about the craft also—how the craft is done, how they said it should be done, the said rules and all. Know what techniques they say work and what they say don’t. Then disagree or agree with them, but know what they’re saying first. Give yourself time to grow and learn, and the time you must give is lifelong. So when you read, then write. Accept all the rejections and acceptances in good faith. And keep going.

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TO A FRIENDLY BROTHER by Oredola Ibrahim

TO A FRIENDLY BROTHER by Oredola Ibrahim

by | Feb 28, 2017 | POEMS

TO A FRIENDLY BROTHER

by Oredola Ibrahim

To a Friendly Brother

…for Bashir
Friends in arm
Brothers for life
Forbidding harm
Chesting the knife
Staying up late
Discussing dreams
Saving the date
With lightened beams
Crushing off bugs
Covering with clothes
Giving tight hugs
Roaming ghettoes
Brothers in arm
Friends for life
Under a charm
For friendly strife
Living off youth
In risky strides
The cult of truth
Stemming the tides
And ganging up
Against the world
Raising the cup
To reason’s twirled

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Oredola Ibrahim, the winner of Inspiring Brilliance Foundation
National Poetry Award 2012, believes in poetry as a tool for self
discovery and ultimately, a potential tool for national transformation. His poetry delves into popular themes like politics, love and inspiration. Oredola Ibrahim is the convener of WhatsApp Poetry Contest, a periodic competition organized on the platform of “The Penclan Initiative” (www.penclan.com). He is a campus journalist, a student-entrepreneur and a web designer. He’s a recent graduate of the University of Ibadan. He tweets @platolaw and can be reached via asiaquad@gmail.com.

 

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