Young voices from the Jos Poetry Slam

The first performance was given by the youngest writer present, nine-year-old Oreoluwa Agboola, who read her quatrain, “Africa”: “Africa /How beautiful you are /Even if I go very far /I will never see anywhere as beautiful as you are.” Such was the brief beauty of this poem that she was recalled for a reprise, which […]

The first performance was given by the youngest writer present, nine-year-old Oreoluwa Agboola, who read her quatrain, “Africa”: “Africa /How beautiful you are /Even if I go very far /I will never see anywhere as beautiful as you are.”

Such was the brief beauty of this poem that she was recalled for a reprise, which she did to astonished applause. Commenting on the performance, Director of the American Corner (a US Embassy-University of Jos project which hosted the event), Dr Tor Iorapuu, spoke of identity and how little Miss Agboola had conceived so broad a sense of self for herself.

After Ore took her seat, another young poet, 15-year-old Shima Tor, performed her poem “Nigeria” which ended in the lines – “Let’s come together and help raise Nigeria.” Talk about the young being the fathers of the old! And of course, Jos ANA is catching them pretty young. The finest and most perceptive critic of the event, perhaps, was 11-year-old Venmak Agboola.

Chairman of Jos ANA, Mrs Bose Tsevende, who earlier said the Association was an umbrella for the arts over the people, providing shelter from problematic social contexts, performed a poem titled “You Came to Town”: “I heard you came back /They say you are radiant still /That your touch can burn, /Wither my flower, without a chance to bloom /And I am afraid to die again before dusk /Yet my heart is knit to you. /I confess my fear to walk in the dark . . . of stumbling in the dark /Still, I will, /Just for you.

A retired educationist and author of the leading English textbook in Nigerian secondary schools, Sir Silas Nnamonu, praised the poem and the poet, noting the contrasting twin born seeds of overwhelming desire and crushing caution in the mind of the poet-persona, wondering about this dual nature of women.

Richard Ali then read his poem “We Died Because”: “We died because we wore caftans /And faced east to pray /We died because we spoke a tongue /That differed from theirs who held the guns /We died because we didn’t have /The bribe to give the faulty rifle /At the police post /we died in a flow of red because /our parents refused that in us /they should be born again….

Jerome Dooga presented the theme paper  in which he briefly made a calmly intellectual but not overly demanding argument for the inclusion of literature and the creative arts not merely in school curricula but into the very sinews of society itself.

“Poetry is the universal art of the mind which has become free in its nature, and which is not tied to find its realisation in external sensuous matter, but expatiates exclusively in the inner space and inner time of the ideas and feelings”, he said.

He made references to Wole Soyinka’s 1965 Kongi’s Harvest to show the expressive quality in the creative arts generally as well as a brief discourse on the Hegelian conception of poetry as “the universal realisation of the art of the mind.” He then touched on William Carlos William’s emphasised four qualities of poetry; the use of commonplace subjects and themes, the duty to write about real events in a language that all people could understand, specificity and the responsibility to write about one’s locale.

“Our youth are dancing in a difficult space at a difficult time in our history”, he said, “and the tragedy of this macabre dance lies in its paradox. The country has so much resource, others envy us. Yet, our level of penury is increasingly becoming legendary globally. It is in the face of all this that we must learn, through poetry and literature, to:

Admire the recklessness of the curve /Marvel at the refinement of the line /Wonder at the sacredness of the word /The patience of the rain and /The jaggedness of the rock.”

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim read his long rhymed poem, “The Rape of My Lady”, in which the lady is the natural environment. Written with remarkable rhythm in rhymed quatrains, he made a lyrical case for conservation much with the same efficacy as Jerome Dooga had made an intellectual case for the aggrandisement of the creative arts. Two memorable quatrains read: “‘We love you’, they claim; yet it is you they defile. /They raid you to adorn she with her temper so vile, /A contradiction like tears of the vicious crocodile /And all to please her, whose kiss is like bile. /Your kiss, my lady, is like wine, /A wine so divine /And your warmth intertwines like twines, /Twines of heavenly vines”.

At this point, poetry as performance was radically redefined by six young persons all under 15, students of the Zaire Independent Baptist Church School, Zaranzong, Jos East Local Government, all members of the Environment Club. The children, on reading a poem by Dr Babajide Agboola, felt the conservation message could be better expressed in drama and set the verse all by themselves into seven short scenes. The play starts with a man informing his wife he will be on his way to farm where he works hard all day and rests under the shade of a tree. Meanwhile, at home, his wife gathers firewood to cook his meal just as their daughter falls ill with a fever; the wife returns to the forest to get herbs which palliates the fever.

In the next scene, the man informs his wife he intends to cut down the trees in order to buy a television and she advises him to build an ‘upstairs’ house as well! The man takes a chainsaw and down goes the trees. He burns the savannah and out comes the rifle with which he shoots the scampering rodents and small animals which he drags after him to the market. And of course when next he tires from farm work, there is no leafy shade beneath which he can replenish himself. When the daughter falls ill, there are of course no herbs to treat her, indeed no firewood to cook with, indeed further, there are no vegetables to cook for the animals being all dead, there is no manure.

The last scene has the man and his wife realising their foolishness while the daughter shivers in a piteous prelude to dying – a very touching portrait of despair. At this point the family is joined by other young thespian environmental activists who had acted as trees and animals and they together broke out into a most touching earth poem.

Steve Rwang Pam, a local radio personality, played on his guitar “I Like The Rain” from his album in the works, which left the hall feeling all country mellow.

Ali is Secretary, Plateau state chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).