22 Feb 2009 |
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Odia Ofeimun: A City by the Lagoon and the Blessing of Poetry By Reuben Abati
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Odia Ofeimun in Lagos of the Poets (2009) defines through his selection of poems and poets, the essential humanizing value of the arts and the subliminal manner in which literature is locked in a continuously dynamic relationship with place and space that is simultaneously spiritual, physical, interactive and artistic. The subject matter of the collection is Lagos: “lagos of the poets”and what it means as the author puts it to be “lagosed”. But foregrounded here is the city as a subject of imaginative exploration, of romantic and intellectual wrestling, how one city compels a journey within and throws up a creative dialogue with the environment of being and living. Cities are places to be lived in, places of destination and departures, locations of identity, of gain and loss, of great contentions, of continuities and discontinuities, landmarks, culture, relationships and vanishing modes; each city like a living being has a soul, but these souls exist at different planes of value and intersections. It is an ontological phenomenon that litters the landscape of literary imagining: so much has been written about London, New York, Dublin, Oxford, Cambridge, Morocco, Ibadan, Nsukka, Ife, Jo’Burg, and all spaces where man strives to manage self and nature, and it is understandable because writers are human beings whose sense of place and home and of space provides inspiration for romanticism or revulsion or protest or irridentism. What does it mean to live in a city? What does it mean to pass through a city and to be touched by its special identity? What is it about cities that moves artists to an imaginary land of expression? Catharsis? Identity? Or turmoil. The city of Lagos is perhaps the most bibliographised of Nigerian cities and places: tomes have been written on it and about it by doctors, lawyers, anthropologists, historians, photographers, biographers, architects, novelists, dramatists, with each contribution capturing aspects of this cosmopolitan melting pot of intriguing diversity. In telling the story of Lagos through the eyes, the words and the imagination of poets. Odia Ofeimun, a leading light among the second generation of contemporary Nigerian poets, tells the story of Nigeria, the story of state and citizen. The poets that are featured in this collection, with the exception of three are all Nigerians, and each one confesses an identification with the city of Lagos, born in Lagos, or passing through Lagos, or visiting Lagos, or hearing about Lagos or dreaming about Lagos, or working in Lagos, one city that touches not just every Nigerian citizen or a visitor to the country, but which leaves an impression. In building Lagos, in historicizing Lagos, we gain a sense of national history, of how Nigeria has been built. In Lagos of the Poets, Odia Ofeimun allows the poets, and himself to paint a picture of the city on a broad canvas of words and imagery that runs from Lord Lugard, to Nnamdi Azikiwe to Dennis Osadebay to L K. Jakande, Bola Tinubu and Babatunde Fashola. Odia Ofeimun’s selection is by no means exhaustive, and many poets have probably been left out, but he chooses the poets that he knows, he chooses poems and poets that he considers of “sufficient artistic ambition to provide a sense of meaning beyond the here and now”(p. xxxiv). As editor however, Odia Ofeimun seems to have been propelled a bit too hard by a sense of balance, of geographical and generational balance, but the clear danger of seeking such balance, despite his resistance of the option of calling for open entries, and working hard at balance as a “hunter-gatherer”, as he describes himself, is that the editor may not even achieve his sub-textual, political objective. Infusing a literary collection with a sense of Federal Character may be a wise thing to do but it may also impose undue concessions, spelled out in form of the unevenness of content. But on the generational plane, Odia Ofeimun’s broad canvas succeeds much more easily: in Lagos of the Poets, poets across generations write about this city of great ambivalence: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dennis Osadebey, Gabriel Okara, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Olu Obafemi, Mamman Vatsa, Funsho Aiyejina, Femi Fatoba, Kayode Aderinokun, Ben Okri, Ezenwa Ohaeto, Uche Nduka, Chiedu Ezeanah, Afam Akeh, Esiaba Irobi, Remi Raji, Wumi Raji, Emman Usman Shehu, Uche Nduka, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Nduka Otiono, Promise Ugochukwu, Maik Nwosu, Angela Nwosu, Obi Nwakannma, Helon Habila, Funmi Adewole, Rashida Ismaili, Idzia Ahmad, Kemi Atanda-Ilori, Lola Soneyin, Akeem Lasisi, Jumoke Verissimo, Austyn Njoku, Uzoma Azuah, Nenghi Ilagha, Ismail Garba, Al-Kasim, Abdulahi Ismaila, Aminu Muhammad, Simbo Olorunfemi, Funmi Adewole and so on, And then the outsiders: Maria Antonieta Flores, Saul Ibargoyen and Claire Harris. Through this selection, the “hunter-gatherer”of poems on and about Lagos succeeds in conveying the cosmopolitanism, the diversity, the energy and the verve of a city that accomodates all and leaves an impression at every encounter, even from a distance: the city of insiders and outsiders, the city of troubadours, of potentates and ordinary citizens, and with each poem from one generation to another, we gain a sense of a generational romance, and of a city with unfinished possibilities, a city with a future as Odia Ofeimun sets up a dialogue and draws our attention in the direction of a city and a poetic tradition around it. In his preface to the anthology, Ofeimun attempts a deliberately ambitious commentary in which he tries to address all questions about the centrality and value of the city of Lagos, and the politics of his composition. This part of the anthology is important for its absolute originality, its informativeness, Odia’s autobiographical accent on his own connections with the city of Lagos and how this is the original impetus for the anthology. But more importantly, the author celebrates the city of Lagos, and in selecting poems and poets, he pays tribute to genius, talent and ambition: unfortunately, a vanishing attribute in Nigeria’s troubled literary scene, long overtaken by illiteracy, pretence, and ethnic posturings. But Odia Ofeimun knows: he is one of the clearest voices in Nigerian literature. His previous offerings include The Poet Lied, A Handle for the Flutist, Dreams at Work, Go Tell the Generals, A Feast of Return, A Boiling Caracas, I will ask questions with stones if they take my voice, in addition to forthcoming books which cover the areas of cultural studies, politics, polemics, journalism, literature and civil society activism, the many areas to which Odia Ofeimun has for more than three decades applied his polyvalent intelligence. The tone of celebration of city and poetry that is struck in Ofeimun’s preface runs through the entire anthology, even if there is so much angst, so much obsession with the dark sides of Lagos. But this is one city that the poets love to distraction and they engage it in various forms as icon, as semiotic signifier, as symbol, and metaphor and idiom. As referent. They love it, they quarrel with it, they protest its inadequacies. They share with it an umbilical intimacy. So Akeem Lasisi writes in A song for Lagos: Ï have been with Lagos since the birth of the moon/When the lagoon was just a bottle of wine/And the magical ocean/A tiny pool in a roving gourd...” This romanticism is echoed in Rotimi Fasan’s Eko Ile: “I came here on my head/ blood on my face/birth cries on my lips”. Even more graphically in Niyi Osundare’s “Ikoyi” (p. 96)., and ”Eko” (p. 100), and Nnamdi Azikiwe’s “Tarkwa bay” (p. 131). Many Lagos acolytes are unable to leave the city, they are like devotees at a pristine temple. Hear Mamman Vatsa, the soldier-poet reacting to the change of Nigeria’s capital from Lagos to Abuja: “Take me back to Lagos/Where everyone’s a boss/I miss the frequent go-slow/That can take you to and fro...../Keep your new capital city/It’s too much of a great pity/I’m rushing back to my Lagos/Where everyone’s a big boss”. This refusal to leave the city, this umbilical bond is further explored in the contributions by Emman Usman Shehu especially “How I will miss you” (p. 136): “How I will miss you, Lagos./If I should die from these wounds/My love is the broken shutters/I long again and again for your wayward ways.” And in Promise Ugochukwu’s Lagos (p.273), the poet writes: “may my tongue/stick to my palette/If I remember you not, Lagos/....You are my favoured yawn/Away from you, I am/Lost in the bulrushes/Anxious to return to you/City of hope, I lose sleep/Above the bridge of time.” This love of the city resonates as a connecting theme throughout the anthology, in form of songs and lyrical celebration of places and their peculiar circumstances: Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Ajegunle, National Theatre, Fela’s Shrine, Ikeja, Tarkwa Bay, Allen Avenue, Mile 12 market, Okokomaiko, Ojuelegba, Idumota, Obalende CMS, Maroko, Oshodi Oke, But this aesthetic and practical fusion of man and space is of the critical variety. There exists in spite of the romance a continuous oscillation of opposites: love/hate, admiration/protest, revulsion/identity; hope/frustrations, triumphs and impediments. Funmi Adewole says “the city is red”; Ben Okri protests about a “darkening city” ; Wumi Raji’s “Ön seeing a Dead Body at Oshodi” (p.27) is on all fours with Ogaga Ifowodo’s “She Lay Dying at Oshodi” (p. 46), Aminu Muhammed writes about “Glow and Darkness” (p. 227)” and “Ëko of Oddity” (p. 230) - comments on the increasing devaluation of human life in Lagos. The underlying note of disappointment is expressed more frontally in Okinba Launko’s “Go to Lagos they said”(p. 134): “Lagos they said is the choice place to go/But nobody remembered the pain.../So go to Lagos they say/But with a heart to shelter pain.” The nature of this pain is fleshed out in the contributions by Jumoke Verissimo, Rotimi Fasan, Tolu Ogunlesi, Ogaga Ifowodo, Lola Shoneyin, Afam Akeh, Uche Nduka, Helon Habila, J. P Clark, Wole Soyinka and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The inclusion of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti among the poets is particularly instructive, as a special tribute by the author to an avant-garde artist whose lyrical compositions merged the modes of drama, agit-prop, narration and street poetry. The anthology covers a range of techniques and talent available in contemporary Nigerian poetry, trends and styles in a representative manner, across four generations, from the more technically accomplished poetry of Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Odia Ofeimun himself, Niyi Osundare, and Okinba Launko, to the definite and impressive continuity in the compositions of Chiedu Ezeanah, Ezenwa Ohaeto, Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Remi Raji, Maik Nwosu, Obi Nwakannma, Esiaba Irobi, Wumi Raji, Uche Nduka, Nduka Otiono, Ogaga Ifowodo, Lola Shoneyin and the promise indicated in the works of Promise Ugochukwu, Helon Habila, Akeem Lasisi, Simbo Olorunfemi, Tolu Ogunlesi and Jumoke Verissimo. What is missing perhaps is Charles Nnolim’s observation of an obsession with prurience in contemporary Nigerian literature; perhaps poetry which records a more bountiful harvest is more morally correct than the novel form, the subject of Nnolim’s investigation under reference. Protest has been a strong element of the literature of Nigeria’s 90s and 20s, and much of it runs through these pages. There is a sense of frustration which is not only about the abuse of the Lagos environment, but more about the politics of dispossesion in the Nigerian society. J. P. Clark and Wole Soyinka and Odia Ofeimun are just as angry as the younger poets; the cadence is strong and direct. This protest or revolt is not in the long run, an expression of hate for the city itself, but revolt against its fortunes over time: a habitat that continues to burst at the seams, a city where many live and they refuse to leave or to part, even when the politics of its management and governance is problematic. And so Adebayo Lamikanra writes in “True Love betrayed” (p. 266): “I hate Lagos/I really do/I hate Lagos/ with deep intensity/The quality of intensity/reserved for true love/I hate Lagos/For what she has become/I hate Lagos/for the dreams she has/ destroyed/I hate Lagos for selling her heart/to the devil”. Contemporary poetic trends in Nigeria have shown much predilection for experimentation and the editor captures this, as evident in Ogaga Ifowodo’s “God Punish you, Lugard” (p.45), Mamman Vatsa’s “Obokun Oda bo” (p. 93); Niyi Osundare’s “Eko” (p. 100); Rashida Ismaili’s “Lagos” (p. 141); Esiaba Irobi’s “The Lagoon” (p. 110), Odia Ofeimun’s “London Letter” (p.195) and Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s “Confusion Break Bone” (p. 277) wherein the poets press language into service, to reflect the varieties of English spoken in a city that is multilingual and linguistically innovative in all possible forms: the local tongue, pidgin English, and international languages. Poetry, like the other genres of literature, heals and inspires. Here, the character, culture and the complexities of a city and invariably of a nation, its poltics and governance have been captured in long and short and varied strokes of words. In the process, the author claims ownership of the city for poets and writers, and the multiple sympathies it enjoys. Hear Femi Fatoba: “If you don’t want to talk about Lagos/Lagos wil tease your tongue/If you don’t want to discuss Lagos/Lagos will taunt your lips/And make your tongue itch/Whoever gets an itch in the tongue and does not talk/Let him swallow the tongue and become dumb/That is the way Lagos is”. Odia Ofeimun’s Lagos of the Poets is useful as both literature and sociology. It will, without doubt, find awaiting it, an enthusiastic audience among both the literati and the general reader.
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