The 11 poets on the longlist of the 2022 edition of the Nigeria Prize for Literature give the audience a good treat at a Book Party organised by the Committee for Relevant Arts in Lagos, AKEEM LASISI writes
Confidence, hope, passion. These are some of the values not in short supply when the 11 poets on the longlist of the Nigeria Prize for Literature marched onto the podium last week. They not only gave bits of what so far distinguished their works from the 287 entries the prize established by Nigeria LNG Ltd received this year, but they also explained what made their literary calling flourishing.
It was at the annual reading organised by the Committee for Relevant Arts which, like the prize itself, has proved to be durable, outliving several other platforms that promote arts and culture. The book party rite is expected to, in weeks ahead, usher in the short list of three, with the 11 being Ogaga Ifowodo (Augusta’s Poodle) Iquo Diana Abasi (Coming Undone As Stitches Tighten), James Eze (Dispossessed), Segun Adekoya (Ife Testament) and S. Su’eddie Agema (Memory and the Call of Waters).Others are Obari Gomba (The Lilt of the Rebel), (Romeo Oriogun ( Nomad), Chijioke Amu Nnadi (The Love Canticles), Remi Raji (Wanderer Cantos), Saddiq Dzukogi (Your Crib My Qibla) and Joe Ushie (Yawns and Belches).
But if anyone thinks the short list will emerge too easily, the person is not likely to be among those who saw the poets read at the MUSON Centre. The reason is that, based on the good accounts the contestants gave concerning thei crafts, one can safely say the crest can end up on the head of any of them. Well, this is not to say that there were no conscious guesses among some ‘learned’ folks in the audience, based on the textures of the portions of the collections the poets presented. Yet, such remain speculations because, as you cannot judge a book by its cover, you can hardly judge it by its excerpts as well. The programme was anchored by writer and researcher, Kola Tubosun, who brought out the best in the writers.
Nigeria NLG was also, as usual, proudly on the ground as it was amply represented by its officials, including the Acting Manager, Corporate Communication and Public Affairs, Anne-Marie Palmer-Ikuku. Saluting the poets for presenting their best, Palmer-Ikuku said: “I must commend Nigerian writers for continuously and ambitiously raising the bar towards winning the $100,000 prize money which The Nigeria Prize for Literature offers and other reputable international prizes as well. I gather two of the shortlists are indeed on the running for other international prizes and I wish them well.
“This Book Party, sponsored by Nigeria LNG in partnership with the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), demonstrates how seriously we take writing and literature and how much we value your submissions. Coming this far in the competition also attests to your excellent writing skills. Thank you for keeping faith with The Nigeria Prize for Literature by submitting your entries for the competition. We at Nigeria LNG are proud of you and we celebrate your prowess in the industry.”
The stories of the poets are as varied as the subjects of their entries. For instance, while an Obari Gomba as much as possible chose, in his collection, not to include political poems, Dzukogi’s work is inspired by the sad incident of the death of his son. On his part, Ogaga Ifowodo excurses into his cherished childhood in the canoe of the poems in his entry.
He said, “I decided to capture those childhood memories, thereby commemorating and representing, thereby affirming my identity and place.”
Also narrating his experience, Eze noted on the story of ‘Dispossessed’: “Our environment has made it difficult for us to heal from our wounds. It won’t be just me if my first poetry book, which dispossessed is, did not address the situation of people who seem to be dispossessed, not because they are lacking in ability, quality and any other thing.”
Below are excerpts of the accounts given by the other contestants:
Amu Nnadi: “I have a long-running engagement with poetry, especially poetry of love and beyond. I’m concerned about the things of earth. The Love Canticles is part of my journey, part of an unashamed stripping of self so that I tell my story as simply and as nakedly as I like.
Iquo Diana Abasi: The poems in this collection were not written for a particular purpose, but when I decided to compile this, I sat with my editor and publisher and we decided that the poems have a cohesion to them, because they document and pay homage to the situation that is Nigeria for the last seven year. For me, poetry helps me escape the madness in the world. It is a way to give freedom, give voice to those who aren’t heard.
Agema: The reason I wrote mine is, because all through life, I’ve been bothered by water, either the River Benue or any other. So, what I did is to create some reflections that recollect on these bodies of water and they ended up coming together in their own way.
Obari Gomba: When doing this collection, I decided to select non-political poems, I wanted to do something that has nothing to do with politics. Towards the end of the collection, I started getting angry about a number of things, so I decided to add two new sections. One on my reflection on the Nigerian situation, and one on the global import of resistance.
Remi Raji: “My sixth collection was published in 2013. So, between then and the time I did the seventh one, there has been a lot of wandering on my part, and I constantly engage in dialogue with my land, because I believe I put it in one of my poems, that a poet’s first duty is to make love to language, to land and liberty, and this has been my mantra over time since I published my first collection in 1997.
Ushie: Poetry is as close to me as my mother tongue. I look at poetry as the choice of the elders; people who have mastered language are the ones that go into poetry and there is so much that can be said in very few words, and it’s like kola nut — when you eat it, it’s bitter, but you enjoy the after-effect, after-taste, and that’s why we still enjoy Shakespeare’s poetry, and we keep enjoying it because fresh meanings keep coming out and it’s the best in the three genres.
Segun Adekoya: Poetry is a kind of music. As they say, poets are failed musicians, and what we try to do with poetry is to make language attain the beauty of expression found in music. We have the poetry of words and life and, unfortunately, people have yet to understand the latter, the beauty around us which we do not appreciate, and I think romance novels have said a lot about that.
Oriogun: A lot of the poems interrogate history and how we see history, especially those of us who are very young. For me, I have no idea of a lot of things that happened in the past, but I think with poetry the language has to be present in our own lives and how we understand it. This book is just an attempt to do that.
Dzukogi: When I lost my child, I started reflecting every single day on a piece of paper, and after seven months of doing that, I read a piece to a friend and he said this will be a nice way to immortalise this child. It’s just a physical manifestation of my daughter that I had lost and I was a father trying to understand the grief of child loss.
While the readings were punctuated by beautiful performances by Uche Obi and his troupe, CORA Board of Trustee Chairman, Chief Kayode Aderinokun, commended the Nigeria LNG for its commitment to the progress of literature. According to him, the company’s collaboration with CORA has been very rewarding.
Aderinokun, a former Chairman of the Lagos State chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors and author of Inferno in the Rain, a poetry collection, said, “It’s a most beautiful collaboration and we are very excited about the number of people who have been responding to this event over so many years, because a book event isn’t like a normal party, but the turnout is huge. I want to recognise the writers who are being celebrated. I happen to be a writer myself, and I know the kind of rigour required to put words together and, more recently, what really inspires us at CORA is that it’s not only in the aspect of literature you find exceptional talent; you also find it in music.
“If you try to interrogate the language of modern songs, you see so much of poetry, rhythm and rhyme in them, and you wonder where this kind of talent is coming from. The kind of talent captured here shows that there is hope for Nigeria. If we can calibrate from the knowledge in this room alone, you wonder why Nigeria still has these problems we’re having.
“If you can reconcile all of this, get together and think through our problems, we can get the solutions. We are reminded tonight that Nigeria is full of thinkers, looking at the collection of people present. Among the 11, we can find our solution, but notwithstanding, we all have a responsibility towards rescuing Nigeria.”
Meanwhile, Co-founder of CORA, Toyin Akinosho, also had kind words for Nigeria LNG and writers: “Nothing beats a book reading, an event at which an author sits and discusses his work with readers in the room. The Book Party is one of the series of events in our Calendar that preface our annual Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF). The theme this year is: ‘Pathways to the Future.”
