By Okechukwu Uwaezuoke, ThisDay Art & Review
"It's a rare and uncommon privilege." - Ken
Abuja Literary Society's co-founder, Ken Ike is among six West African recipients of the 2008 Ashoka Fellowship. Approved by the board of the prestigious global organisation in Washington DC, each of the Fellows automatically becomes a life member of Ashoka and will receive a stipend of about $70,000 spread over three years.
According to the citation by Ashoka, Ike is been recognised for his decade-long work in the regeneration of a literary culture and reading habit in Abuja. Using the platform of his highly successful Abuja Literary Society, Ike conceived the Abuja Reads Project, which is the use of conscious mentorship to bring back accurate reading and writing habits in young people.
Ashoka West Africa regional director, Leslie Agams, said the recipients of Ashoka Fellowship are chosen after a very rigorous search and selection process in which they demonstrate that they fully meet Ashoka's selection criteria.
"Other 2008 Nigerian recipients include Kingsley Bangswell, Mohammed Bah Abba, Ifeoma Joy Okoye, Dorothy Aken'ova, Jude Obodo, Gbenga Sesan and Nnaemka Ikegwuonu who were singled out for possessing system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems. Each is regarded as a social entrepreneur because the work that they do creates positive social change."
Jude Obodo, for instance, discovered a more reliable approach of guiding young people into careers for which they manifest innate ability. He is making the round of schools in Abuja FCT deploying his model based on scientific principles, freely to young people. This model has guided a good number of young people into careers they are passionate about with a precision not remotely realizable by the usual guidance and counseling in schools.
Mohammed Bah Abba, in Kano, invented the Desert Fridge, a pot-in-pot cooling system not depended on electricity and made available to rural farmers to preserve their agricultural products thereby helping them command better market prices.
Kingsley Bangswell is using his Youth Development Initiative as the rallying point of youth development and political empowerment, while Ifeoma okoye is in the forefront of expanding the clinical trial infrastructure in Nigeria, as well as creating a forum for clinical research practitioners to exchange ideas on best practices.
Known in literary circles as the Slam Master, because of his organisation of Abuja's first performance poetry contests, Abuja Poetry Slam, Ken Ike is a poet and author of the best selling, The River Died.
"I received the news with deep joy," he said. "It's a rare and uncommon privilege."
Ike's Abuja Reads Project is aimed at teenagers and young adults who are the age groups most often lured into anti-social behaviour through lousy role models grabbed through uncritical immersion in cable TV viewing. He aims to get them reading for leisure and self development. Abuja Reads project shall do this by establishing reading clubs in secondary schools in Abuja and environs. This ultimately will lead to renaissance of the kind similar to what the ALS achieved with adults in Abuja.
Founded in 1980 by Bill Drayton in Washington DC, Ashoka is the global organisation of the world's leading social entrepreneurs—men and women who have innovative solutions to social problems and the potential to change patterns across society. They demonstrate unrivaled commitment to bold new ideas and prove that compassion, creativity, and collaboration are tremendous forces for change.
Ashoka's core work is identifying and investing these leading social entrepreneurs with new ideas for social change. These innovators, or changemakers, are elected Ashoka Fellows, given financial and professional support, as well as access to a global network of social entrepreneurs. Since 1981, Ashoka has elected over 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support, and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries.
Ashoka initiated operations in West Africa with the launch of its Nigeria program in 1991. The Nigerian Fellowship has grown from 8 social entrepreneurs elected in 1991 to 69 fellows by 2008.
By Okechukwu Uwaezuoke, ThisDay Art & Review
1.1.10
Abuja Book Club Gets Nigerians Reading Again!
Abuja Book Club Gets Nigerians Reading Again!
By Umelo Ojinmah
When the Abuja Literary Society (ALS) decided to inaugurate the Abuja Book Club in association with NU Metro Mediastore Abuja, some felt that it was the logical progression for a society that is in the vanguard of literary promotions, creative writing and reading.
The Abuja Literary Society came out of the desire by some creative Abuja residents for a place and time for intellectual discourse and creativity, away from the usual daily hustle and bustle of eking out existence and sustenance. The impact and importance of the Society's activities can be measured by the fact that such top rank hotels as Transcorp Hilton and Hotel Rosebud are willing to extend hall facilities for their weekly readings at no cost; as well as the British Council, Signature Gallery and NU Metro Mediastore.
The formation of the Abuja Book Club to which the then Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, showed personal interest and declared open, was, for the Society, a way to consolidate on its formidable achievement of weaning intellectuals, academic and creatively inclined youths away from video films and games and Friday night clubbing, to take very active interest in reading and creative writing. Naturally then, the question would be asked as to what extent the Society and Book Club have succeeded in their set objectives of getting Nigerians, to once more, begin to have an inclination for leisure reading both as a hobby and for entertainment.
The numerical increase in the attendance at both the weekly poetry and short story readings and the monthly third Saturday Book Club reading at Ceddi Plaza, while indicative of interest, was not empirical proof that people were actually beginning to read more. At each monthly book reading, a contemporary novel was chosen for the next month's reading and analysis, and members would usually be enjoined to buy and read the book before the next meeting.
Began in 2006, the Abuja Book Club has led members to study several books, both bestsellers and very new books. Members have read through Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Adichie; In the Blink of an Eye, by Eugenia Abu; The River Died , by Ken Ike-Okere; 26A by Diana Evans; Merchants of Flesh, by Ifeoma Chinwuba; and several more.
At the May 2007 reading, Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun was chosen for the June reading. Members were excited when the book won the Orange Broadband Prize for fiction but were more pleasantly surprised that the book which NU Metro-Ceddi Plaza was asked to stock in a large quantity had been sold out. Popular Bookshops such as BKL Bookshops also confirmed that they had literarily run out of stock of the book.
In June Kaine Agary's award winning Yellow Yellow was read and analysed. The novel, which tells the coming-of-age story of Zilayefa, a young Niger-Delta girl born of a Nigerian mother and a Greek sailor, who left Nigeria before she was born, is set in Port-Harcourt. Seduced by dreams of a better life in the city, Zilayefa leaves her village for Port Harcourt. There she passes through another aspect of oil exploitation rarely discussed – what women are going through in the Niger Delta. In the book Agary puts a human face to the Niger Delta problems – away from hostage taking and communal clashes.
Last month the, Book Club, considered Umelo Ojinmah's The Pact, a compact book which retells the historical clash of two south Eastern towns and the multi-level defence and blood pacts that shaped the early 20th Century clashes. Currently, the Club is reading Segun Afolabi's A Life Elsewhere which won the 2005 Caine Prize for African Writing. Nu Metro grants Club members significant discount to purchase the selected book of the month.
While it could be argued that the award won by Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is contributory to the interest people have shown in the book, the fact cannot be denied that the Abuja Book Club readings at NU Metro-Ceddi Plaza every 3rd Saturday of each month is gathering interest and momentum among Abuja intellectuals and young writers.
So will you join Abuja Book Club and get Nigeria reading again?
Ojinmah is Associate Professor of Literature, Nassarawa State University, Keffi, and Coordinator of the Abuja Book Club. To contact the Club write to: abujaliterarysociety@gmail.com
By Umelo Ojinmah
When the Abuja Literary Society (ALS) decided to inaugurate the Abuja Book Club in association with NU Metro Mediastore Abuja, some felt that it was the logical progression for a society that is in the vanguard of literary promotions, creative writing and reading.
The Abuja Literary Society came out of the desire by some creative Abuja residents for a place and time for intellectual discourse and creativity, away from the usual daily hustle and bustle of eking out existence and sustenance. The impact and importance of the Society's activities can be measured by the fact that such top rank hotels as Transcorp Hilton and Hotel Rosebud are willing to extend hall facilities for their weekly readings at no cost; as well as the British Council, Signature Gallery and NU Metro Mediastore.
The formation of the Abuja Book Club to which the then Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, showed personal interest and declared open, was, for the Society, a way to consolidate on its formidable achievement of weaning intellectuals, academic and creatively inclined youths away from video films and games and Friday night clubbing, to take very active interest in reading and creative writing. Naturally then, the question would be asked as to what extent the Society and Book Club have succeeded in their set objectives of getting Nigerians, to once more, begin to have an inclination for leisure reading both as a hobby and for entertainment.
The numerical increase in the attendance at both the weekly poetry and short story readings and the monthly third Saturday Book Club reading at Ceddi Plaza, while indicative of interest, was not empirical proof that people were actually beginning to read more. At each monthly book reading, a contemporary novel was chosen for the next month's reading and analysis, and members would usually be enjoined to buy and read the book before the next meeting.
Began in 2006, the Abuja Book Club has led members to study several books, both bestsellers and very new books. Members have read through Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Adichie; In the Blink of an Eye, by Eugenia Abu; The River Died , by Ken Ike-Okere; 26A by Diana Evans; Merchants of Flesh, by Ifeoma Chinwuba; and several more.
At the May 2007 reading, Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun was chosen for the June reading. Members were excited when the book won the Orange Broadband Prize for fiction but were more pleasantly surprised that the book which NU Metro-Ceddi Plaza was asked to stock in a large quantity had been sold out. Popular Bookshops such as BKL Bookshops also confirmed that they had literarily run out of stock of the book.
In June Kaine Agary's award winning Yellow Yellow was read and analysed. The novel, which tells the coming-of-age story of Zilayefa, a young Niger-Delta girl born of a Nigerian mother and a Greek sailor, who left Nigeria before she was born, is set in Port-Harcourt. Seduced by dreams of a better life in the city, Zilayefa leaves her village for Port Harcourt. There she passes through another aspect of oil exploitation rarely discussed – what women are going through in the Niger Delta. In the book Agary puts a human face to the Niger Delta problems – away from hostage taking and communal clashes.
Last month the, Book Club, considered Umelo Ojinmah's The Pact, a compact book which retells the historical clash of two south Eastern towns and the multi-level defence and blood pacts that shaped the early 20th Century clashes. Currently, the Club is reading Segun Afolabi's A Life Elsewhere which won the 2005 Caine Prize for African Writing. Nu Metro grants Club members significant discount to purchase the selected book of the month.
While it could be argued that the award won by Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is contributory to the interest people have shown in the book, the fact cannot be denied that the Abuja Book Club readings at NU Metro-Ceddi Plaza every 3rd Saturday of each month is gathering interest and momentum among Abuja intellectuals and young writers.
So will you join Abuja Book Club and get Nigeria reading again?
Ojinmah is Associate Professor of Literature, Nassarawa State University, Keffi, and Coordinator of the Abuja Book Club. To contact the Club write to: abujaliterarysociety@gmail.com
THE MADMAN OF OYE
THE MADMAN OF OYE
He called himself a prophet
But the villagers knew him
As the madman of Oye.
I did not know where to place him
Madman or prophet?
Strolling through village dirt roads,
He cut a dashing figure in his robes of leaves.
All covered in dainty green like ukwa trees.
Tall as the gazelle,
Gangling as the ostrich
He was the tallest figure
My young eyes ever did see.
Some said he became mad
When he chanced upon mamywater – the gorgeous water mermaid,
Half woman, half fish – And she captured
Him in her midnight dance.
Others said he took leave
Of his senses when he challenged his Chi
- his personal guardian deity – to a fight.
Yet others claimed,
He smoked too much of the foul weed and
White substance used by city dwellers.
His was an intriguing life.
Legend says he was born of dwarfs.
No one could account for how he came to be so tall.
The village elders said
He had the eyes of amusu – the fly by night witches.
He seemed to know everyone's secret.
Meeting a little-known village crook,
He shared with him:
'Everyday is for the thief,
One day is for the owner of the house.'
The next day the thief was killed by a night hunter.
On another occasion
He told a respected village elder:
'The forbidden fruit is juicy, but
In it is the poison of ajuala, the serpent.'
Soon, the elder was exposed as an adulterer.
Once he was asked
Why he preferred
To dress in leaves. His reply?
'A man who is drenched by rain
Does not care if he pisses on himself.'
At night
His voice could be heard
From the forest
Chanting to his God.
I was 7 when
I met him on a lonely farm road.
He was sitting on a dead tree rump
Talking with the spirits
Only he could see.
I was chilled with fear and
Tried to sneak across without attracting his attention.
When I thought I was safe,
His voice rang out: 'Little boy!'
I stopped. Frozen with fear. Sweating,
Despite the early morning frost.
Turning sideways, our eyes met.
He had the most unusual eyes. Eyes
So deep like an earth-sunken well; yet so piercing
You thought he could see the very depths of your soul.
'Someday,' he said, 'you will write about me.'
Laughing, he melted into the forest.
Today,
I fulfill those words.
Culled from: The River Died by Ken Ike
He called himself a prophet
But the villagers knew him
As the madman of Oye.
I did not know where to place him
Madman or prophet?
Strolling through village dirt roads,
He cut a dashing figure in his robes of leaves.
All covered in dainty green like ukwa trees.
Tall as the gazelle,
Gangling as the ostrich
He was the tallest figure
My young eyes ever did see.
Some said he became mad
When he chanced upon mamywater – the gorgeous water mermaid,
Half woman, half fish – And she captured
Him in her midnight dance.
Others said he took leave
Of his senses when he challenged his Chi
- his personal guardian deity – to a fight.
Yet others claimed,
He smoked too much of the foul weed and
White substance used by city dwellers.
His was an intriguing life.
Legend says he was born of dwarfs.
No one could account for how he came to be so tall.
The village elders said
He had the eyes of amusu – the fly by night witches.
He seemed to know everyone's secret.
Meeting a little-known village crook,
He shared with him:
'Everyday is for the thief,
One day is for the owner of the house.'
The next day the thief was killed by a night hunter.
On another occasion
He told a respected village elder:
'The forbidden fruit is juicy, but
In it is the poison of ajuala, the serpent.'
Soon, the elder was exposed as an adulterer.
Once he was asked
Why he preferred
To dress in leaves. His reply?
'A man who is drenched by rain
Does not care if he pisses on himself.'
At night
His voice could be heard
From the forest
Chanting to his God.
I was 7 when
I met him on a lonely farm road.
He was sitting on a dead tree rump
Talking with the spirits
Only he could see.
I was chilled with fear and
Tried to sneak across without attracting his attention.
When I thought I was safe,
His voice rang out: 'Little boy!'
I stopped. Frozen with fear. Sweating,
Despite the early morning frost.
Turning sideways, our eyes met.
He had the most unusual eyes. Eyes
So deep like an earth-sunken well; yet so piercing
You thought he could see the very depths of your soul.
'Someday,' he said, 'you will write about me.'
Laughing, he melted into the forest.
Today,
I fulfill those words.
Culled from: The River Died by Ken Ike
संपले Poems
THE RIVER DIED
Last night the river died
The creek reversed its course
and meandered away from our shore.
Last night the river died.
And on the now stony flooring
Of the retracted brook, I pick, here
The shattered cowries and there
The memoirs of our unfulfilled longing.
Last night the river – our tributary – died
The stream – our bay of affection – sauntered
Away to an unknown isle
Leaving you and I,
Scaly, scarred fishes
On the sandy lair
Gasping
For air.
ANOTHER DAWN
A glow in nature’s
mystery skies
Signifying the climax
of the battle for the skies.
A cock crows,
Impatient to escape from the coop
and begin the day’s
search for food.
My multi-coloured pigeons
begin to coo.
In the land of ethereal dreams
my spirit wings
begin to twitch
In preparation for the long flights
back to earth.
Soon the battle of the skies
will be won
by the sun
and his
Golden rays
shall caress
my closed eyes
Like the touch of a faithful lover.
Soon
There will be
a stretching
and a yawning
All nature will be filled with the sounds
of waking creatures
Soon
Babies shall
be born and men shall
die.
Soon
It shall be dawn.
Last night the river died
The creek reversed its course
and meandered away from our shore.
Last night the river died.
And on the now stony flooring
Of the retracted brook, I pick, here
The shattered cowries and there
The memoirs of our unfulfilled longing.
Last night the river – our tributary – died
The stream – our bay of affection – sauntered
Away to an unknown isle
Leaving you and I,
Scaly, scarred fishes
On the sandy lair
Gasping
For air.
ANOTHER DAWN
A glow in nature’s
mystery skies
Signifying the climax
of the battle for the skies.
A cock crows,
Impatient to escape from the coop
and begin the day’s
search for food.
My multi-coloured pigeons
begin to coo.
In the land of ethereal dreams
my spirit wings
begin to twitch
In preparation for the long flights
back to earth.
Soon the battle of the skies
will be won
by the sun
and his
Golden rays
shall caress
my closed eyes
Like the touch of a faithful lover.
Soon
There will be
a stretching
and a yawning
All nature will be filled with the sounds
of waking creatures
Soon
Babies shall
be born and men shall
die.
Soon
It shall be dawn.
As the Muse Prompts
As the Muse Prompts
By Okechukwu Uwaezuoke, ThisDay 07.10.2005 Encounter
A poet of a long-standing experience, Ken Ike-Okere calls himself. "I've been in the circles [of poets], I would say...It's one of my life passions," he adds.
Indeed, the book The River Died might be his first published collection of poetry but the Masters degree holder of Theatre/Media Arts and Journalism already has several of his poems in anthologies. Among these anthologies are Austin (Texas) International Poetry Festival Anthology and Moondance Journal in France. He also featured at the Houston International Poetry Festival.
It all began -- his bardic vocation, that is -- in his university days. He had then written a couple of poems. Not serious poems, he quickly explains. But those were his first, albeit unsteady, steps in poetry.
And the serious poems? He cites two catalysts to his initiation into serious poetry. The first was his falling in love for the first time. Is there not some aphorism to the effect that everyone becomes a poet with a touch of love? The olive-complexioned literary artists recalls that he wrote up to 20 poems within three years. Impressive. And impressionable. "I guess they're right that love is the greatest feeling in the world," he laughs.
The second catalyst came with his awakening to a new spiritual experience. It was one that rocked the very foundations of his previous beliefs. To his hitherto unanswered questions, which partly bordered on the whence, the whither and the wherefore of his earthly existence, he found coherent and credible answers. And...he soon crossed the threshold from belief to conviction.
All these happened in the early 90s. Sometime between 1991 and 1992, to be precise.
But his environment! Was there nothing about it that influenced his creativity? his interviewer wants to know. There is. He mentions his home town Ezi-ala in Imo State.
The afore-mentioned catalysts seemed to have projected him back to his early childhood years. He was then growing up in Kaduna, he explains. But he was opportuned to make frequent trips to his highly cherished roots. "I didn't know I imbibed a lot of impressions that period."
The catalysts besides his creativity also triggered off the consciousness of his "Africaness". This reverberates through all the poems in the entire collection.
He picks up a copy of the book and reads one of the poems he titled "Nne Nne". It evokes the "special bond" that existed between him and his grand-mother. So special, he assures his interlocutor, that he always looked forward to returning to his beloved Ezi-ala. He was the only grand-child, who spent time with her. Hence he could learn so much from her that he could never have learnt from his city-based parents.
Is it his reading or the poem itself that makes so much deep impression on the listener?
That is difficult to establish. Perhaps, it is both. And without any hint of immodesty, Ike-Okere says that each time he recites his poems, people always wanted to know where they would get to buy his collection.
That was before the publication of his book. It was presented on Friday, June 24 at the British Council premises in Maitama, Abuja. It was so highly regarded and received that "the very first edition ran out." Among the enthusiasts, he continues, were people who ordinarily could not relate to poetry. Some even voluntarily came to ask for copies to send to their children's schools and wondered why it is not yet a recommended text in the school curriculum. They must have discerned some values in the collection.
Indeed, this amiable poet had consciously set out to impart three sets of values through his poems. The first borders on cultural heritage, which is akin to a clarion call to everyone to be rooted in the values embedded in their respective cultural spaces. He describes the poems coming under the section of the book titled Reflections as merely spiritual poems with Igbo imagery. In writing them he was making a deliberate attempt to impart cultural values that would serve as a bridge across generations.
The Igbo language, he laments, has been listed by the United Nations as a dying language because fewer and fewer people are speaking it. This, he blames on the fact that many children these days are estranged from their culture. There are some, according to him, who have never seen live chickens except on the television screens. "It's alarming, very, very alarming to everybody who has any little sensitivity in him."
He calls for a cultural regeneration. Not a wholesale embrace of everything that is cultural. For culture itself is dynamic. He only accepts the good things of his culture. Those things he can safely recommend to his children...And his most accepted poems, it seems, are those that hark back at his Africaness.
He also consciously celebrates the value of the word. In his poems, he tries to show the efficacy of the power of the word. Words if employed aright will help to create more pleasant terrestrial conditions for humanity. He also makes the effort to imbue the poems, albeit written in English, with those primordial qualities that would have triggered a portentous effect on the Igbo listeners. Thus, he hopes, the human language can be regenerated as a bridge for communication.
In his Author's Note, he writes: "Near the crystal clear waters of Ogo-chia stream and the murky grey Imo River, I learned the ceremony of speech in the Ibo language: of proverbs, metaphors, and alliterations; also of similes and puns; fables and myths. A good speaker was one who spiced his speech with a healthy dose of all these elements."
Lastly, he uses his poems to impart spiritual values on his audience. His new convictions have imparted in him new recognitions, which seep through his poems. Even then, he does not discard the props of cultural images. He reads yet another poem titled "Apparition", which he says alludes to the those things that hinder the human being from attaining his goals. "I try to use strong metaphors...to convey this," he says.
He retells the story of the Light-Envoys to this part of creation in the poems "Stranger I" and "Stranger II" but with a cultural ambience that the African can identify with.
Ike-Okere owes the gripping quality of his poems to his readiness at whatever time and place to put down any inspiring thought that strikes him. This experience he captures in the poem, "The Muse". He responds to the strong urge to put down these poems as they assail him. Some demanded to be put down on paper even when he was driving. He complied by pulling over. He is usually overwhelmed by sadness whenever he fails to respond to these promptings.
There is also a conscious effort on his part to dwell on an issue for long enough time for it to mature into something he could share with others. This was the experience he had with a recent poem he wrote on the recent Apo killings, which is not included in the present collection.
Though he feels fulfilled each time he puts down his thoughts in a poem, he has never been in a hurry to publish. He, for instance, took his time with the poem "Incantation" and in the process expunged some concepts, which in his opinion are distorted. He subsequently replaced them with the ones he could relate with given his present disposition.
Then his immersion into his Africaness means he read a lot on Igbo mythology with the benefit of the hindsight from a superior knowledge. Igbo words like "chi" and "igwe" opened up their possibilities to him.
By Okechukwu Uwaezuoke, ThisDay 07.10.2005 Encounter
A poet of a long-standing experience, Ken Ike-Okere calls himself. "I've been in the circles [of poets], I would say...It's one of my life passions," he adds.
Indeed, the book The River Died might be his first published collection of poetry but the Masters degree holder of Theatre/Media Arts and Journalism already has several of his poems in anthologies. Among these anthologies are Austin (Texas) International Poetry Festival Anthology and Moondance Journal in France. He also featured at the Houston International Poetry Festival.
It all began -- his bardic vocation, that is -- in his university days. He had then written a couple of poems. Not serious poems, he quickly explains. But those were his first, albeit unsteady, steps in poetry.
And the serious poems? He cites two catalysts to his initiation into serious poetry. The first was his falling in love for the first time. Is there not some aphorism to the effect that everyone becomes a poet with a touch of love? The olive-complexioned literary artists recalls that he wrote up to 20 poems within three years. Impressive. And impressionable. "I guess they're right that love is the greatest feeling in the world," he laughs.
The second catalyst came with his awakening to a new spiritual experience. It was one that rocked the very foundations of his previous beliefs. To his hitherto unanswered questions, which partly bordered on the whence, the whither and the wherefore of his earthly existence, he found coherent and credible answers. And...he soon crossed the threshold from belief to conviction.
All these happened in the early 90s. Sometime between 1991 and 1992, to be precise.
But his environment! Was there nothing about it that influenced his creativity? his interviewer wants to know. There is. He mentions his home town Ezi-ala in Imo State.
The afore-mentioned catalysts seemed to have projected him back to his early childhood years. He was then growing up in Kaduna, he explains. But he was opportuned to make frequent trips to his highly cherished roots. "I didn't know I imbibed a lot of impressions that period."
The catalysts besides his creativity also triggered off the consciousness of his "Africaness". This reverberates through all the poems in the entire collection.
He picks up a copy of the book and reads one of the poems he titled "Nne Nne". It evokes the "special bond" that existed between him and his grand-mother. So special, he assures his interlocutor, that he always looked forward to returning to his beloved Ezi-ala. He was the only grand-child, who spent time with her. Hence he could learn so much from her that he could never have learnt from his city-based parents.
Is it his reading or the poem itself that makes so much deep impression on the listener?
That is difficult to establish. Perhaps, it is both. And without any hint of immodesty, Ike-Okere says that each time he recites his poems, people always wanted to know where they would get to buy his collection.
That was before the publication of his book. It was presented on Friday, June 24 at the British Council premises in Maitama, Abuja. It was so highly regarded and received that "the very first edition ran out." Among the enthusiasts, he continues, were people who ordinarily could not relate to poetry. Some even voluntarily came to ask for copies to send to their children's schools and wondered why it is not yet a recommended text in the school curriculum. They must have discerned some values in the collection.
Indeed, this amiable poet had consciously set out to impart three sets of values through his poems. The first borders on cultural heritage, which is akin to a clarion call to everyone to be rooted in the values embedded in their respective cultural spaces. He describes the poems coming under the section of the book titled Reflections as merely spiritual poems with Igbo imagery. In writing them he was making a deliberate attempt to impart cultural values that would serve as a bridge across generations.
The Igbo language, he laments, has been listed by the United Nations as a dying language because fewer and fewer people are speaking it. This, he blames on the fact that many children these days are estranged from their culture. There are some, according to him, who have never seen live chickens except on the television screens. "It's alarming, very, very alarming to everybody who has any little sensitivity in him."
He calls for a cultural regeneration. Not a wholesale embrace of everything that is cultural. For culture itself is dynamic. He only accepts the good things of his culture. Those things he can safely recommend to his children...And his most accepted poems, it seems, are those that hark back at his Africaness.
He also consciously celebrates the value of the word. In his poems, he tries to show the efficacy of the power of the word. Words if employed aright will help to create more pleasant terrestrial conditions for humanity. He also makes the effort to imbue the poems, albeit written in English, with those primordial qualities that would have triggered a portentous effect on the Igbo listeners. Thus, he hopes, the human language can be regenerated as a bridge for communication.
In his Author's Note, he writes: "Near the crystal clear waters of Ogo-chia stream and the murky grey Imo River, I learned the ceremony of speech in the Ibo language: of proverbs, metaphors, and alliterations; also of similes and puns; fables and myths. A good speaker was one who spiced his speech with a healthy dose of all these elements."
Lastly, he uses his poems to impart spiritual values on his audience. His new convictions have imparted in him new recognitions, which seep through his poems. Even then, he does not discard the props of cultural images. He reads yet another poem titled "Apparition", which he says alludes to the those things that hinder the human being from attaining his goals. "I try to use strong metaphors...to convey this," he says.
He retells the story of the Light-Envoys to this part of creation in the poems "Stranger I" and "Stranger II" but with a cultural ambience that the African can identify with.
Ike-Okere owes the gripping quality of his poems to his readiness at whatever time and place to put down any inspiring thought that strikes him. This experience he captures in the poem, "The Muse". He responds to the strong urge to put down these poems as they assail him. Some demanded to be put down on paper even when he was driving. He complied by pulling over. He is usually overwhelmed by sadness whenever he fails to respond to these promptings.
There is also a conscious effort on his part to dwell on an issue for long enough time for it to mature into something he could share with others. This was the experience he had with a recent poem he wrote on the recent Apo killings, which is not included in the present collection.
Though he feels fulfilled each time he puts down his thoughts in a poem, he has never been in a hurry to publish. He, for instance, took his time with the poem "Incantation" and in the process expunged some concepts, which in his opinion are distorted. He subsequently replaced them with the ones he could relate with given his present disposition.
Then his immersion into his Africaness means he read a lot on Igbo mythology with the benefit of the hindsight from a superior knowledge. Igbo words like "chi" and "igwe" opened up their possibilities to him.
The River Died – A Proud Heritage
The River Died – A Proud Heritage
By Felix Okoro
A man’s heritage is the sum of his inherited traditions, inherited spirituality, and inherited relationships. Add to this his acquired traditions, revealed spirituality, and acquired relationships and you’ll begin to understand the complexities that shape the human psyche. This mix is potent. It is effervescent; and, it is capable of the greatest good or the worst evil depending on how man shapes this creative potpourri.
Employed by a gifted, knowing artist, this mix becomes admirably charged, highly redolent, and spiritually renewing. It shows more poignantly the tragic-comic human hubris of the present as it evocatively paints the past. In poetry, it is highly lyrical and possesses such beauty of imagery and language that we begin to understand why poetry is regarded as the highest form of artistic expression.
Ken Ike’s poetry embodies the best of these traditions, weaving the past and present, myth, fable and immediate reality, spirituality and everyday occurrences, in one refreshing wholesome mix; thus, creating visual patterns and verbal fragrances that invite you, the reader and audience, to a world of poetic kinship.
His heritage is one conditioned by a rich, but fast-disappearing, culture; a knowing, revealing, spirituality; and, a wealthy tapestry of relationships across the canvass of life. That he transcribes all these with the aplomb of a Soyinka and the warmth of an Achebe is evidence that art truly is alive and well in our society, and that our new generation of writers will soar like Eneke, the intuitive bird.
The River Died is the literary harvest of a fruitful spirit!
ThisDay Review
By Felix Okoro
A man’s heritage is the sum of his inherited traditions, inherited spirituality, and inherited relationships. Add to this his acquired traditions, revealed spirituality, and acquired relationships and you’ll begin to understand the complexities that shape the human psyche. This mix is potent. It is effervescent; and, it is capable of the greatest good or the worst evil depending on how man shapes this creative potpourri.
Employed by a gifted, knowing artist, this mix becomes admirably charged, highly redolent, and spiritually renewing. It shows more poignantly the tragic-comic human hubris of the present as it evocatively paints the past. In poetry, it is highly lyrical and possesses such beauty of imagery and language that we begin to understand why poetry is regarded as the highest form of artistic expression.
Ken Ike’s poetry embodies the best of these traditions, weaving the past and present, myth, fable and immediate reality, spirituality and everyday occurrences, in one refreshing wholesome mix; thus, creating visual patterns and verbal fragrances that invite you, the reader and audience, to a world of poetic kinship.
His heritage is one conditioned by a rich, but fast-disappearing, culture; a knowing, revealing, spirituality; and, a wealthy tapestry of relationships across the canvass of life. That he transcribes all these with the aplomb of a Soyinka and the warmth of an Achebe is evidence that art truly is alive and well in our society, and that our new generation of writers will soar like Eneke, the intuitive bird.
The River Died is the literary harvest of a fruitful spirit!
ThisDay Review
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