Bouncing Balls and the wordsmith

Through the vast experiences the poet garnered from the university of life , the poet tries to  paint in words to readers the ills of the society. its twist and turns , its ups and downs and the extent to which some people go to amass evil things in name of ‘ richness’ or whatever […]

Through the vast experiences the poet garnered from the university of life , the poet tries to  paint in words to readers the ills of the society. its twist and turns , its ups and downs and the extent to which some people go to amass evil things in name of ‘ richness’ or whatever the reader decides to call it in his own parlance.

As Ismail Bala views the poets in his foreward , that the poems are not only a testimony to the poet’s belief in the bsubtle but profound power of literature in the development of the society , but also they also represent a positive , timely supplement to the response and reaction of Nigerians to the ills of the country. Idris Ahmad has, in his collection , rekindled memorably the features of our checked experiences   as a country to what for want of a better phrase could be called a ‘ a vista of vision ‘ , at once inviting and stultifying to readers.

For instance , in my favourite poem and perhaps the poet’s  devout, ‘ Bouncing Ball ‘,  the poet metaphorically tells us that life is but a stage ; a  place where some people come while others go.  Equally in the same poem , the poet tries to bring us to the reality of life by way of interplay between the ‘ real’ world and that of make – believe .

‘ Apartheid ‘ as another poem in the collection , is richly   crafted taking us back through memory lane of the then south African society. The society was then saddled with mundane issues of segregation and dehumanization . But one style that uniquely makes the poet standout among others is his ability to foresee ‘ hope’ as we have seen in the poem thus:

With happiness and joy

With delight and excitement ,

With unveiled eyes will my brother again’

See the light of the moon and a view of sun.

This idea of hope extends to other poems but a handful in the collection which is a good omen a poet should have at his finger tips.

As regards the language use in the poem , the poet uses simple yet poetically charged language to achieve meaning and arouse readers’ emotions. The language is striking in that all the words used are of everydays ‘s appeal and they contain meaning that even laymen would quickly grasp to say ‘ this is what the poet means ‘.

His thematic concerns deal with topical issues ranging from love, marriage , nature, corruption , survival and many more as they affect the facets of human life. This makes the poems original and fresh , a chink of meat to masticate and not bones.

The fact that the poet is of the last century does not make him out of the picture of what is currently happening in this our ever changing world . 0ne begins to wonder where one has gotten such  tapestry     of ideas and be able to weave them to inform the society of its predicaments and how best to go about correcting the ills. The poems seek to tell a tale , to couch in the sensitivity and sensibility of the poet’s  encounter with numerous challenges of life in ‘modern ‘ Nigeria.

One more thing we need to consider on Idris Ahmad  is his ability to sustain the burning fire of poetry for so long time (1977) . He has been into the mainstream of poetry for that long, making his voice to be distinctly heard into the cacophony of voices  of poets of his own times . He could be new to some poets and literary personas but of course , his newness only comes with the production of this collection and not him, the poet, in person.

On the whole , as Ismail Bala succinctly put it , ‘Bouncing Ball and other poems ‘ gives us an insight into the poet’s mind , and no less  flourishes from our reading  (critical or appreciative )  as  a memorable book of poems. The poems are gifted to the discerning and discriminating reader in a simple ( not simplistic) demotic tone with well worked metaphors . What is more, the poet has unveiled the darkness that is about to engulf our society through his poetic voice. He advocates change which is what the society should strive to achieve at the end of the tunnel.