Title: Songs We Sing Before We Sleep
Author: Iliya Kambai Dennis
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 44
Format: E-Book
Publishers: Authorpedia Publishers
Year: 2020
In his praise for Iliya Kambai Dennis’ Songs We Sing Before We Sleep, Jide Badmus, author of Scripture, terms it “a vibrant heart beating in the background”. While writer and critic Eugene Yakubu, speaks glowingly of Iliya’s talents saying, Iliya writes immensely on even the most trivial of feelings, sensations and ideas in novel and amusing ways…”
Both writers have simply summed up the gems embedded in Iliya’s mini collection of poems. And except one’s concern isn’t just a cursory or superficial gaze, there isn’t a pressing need to look too far beyond these.
Songs We Sing Before We Sleep opens with a song — brief but largely effective reminder of the ongoing turmoil in the diaspora where discrimination against black identity is rife and has grown into one long sordid tale. Despite the seemingly bleak prospects of this lingering battle in reality, the poet still asserts a feeling of hope with these lines: This is the last night/ We would toss our bodies on this burning wall… that tucks a black boy/ into an empty song. The poem, serving as a kind of pilot episode, holds an indelible nuance and evokes a yearning—a muezzin’s fervent beckoning to immerse oneself in the totality of what Iliya has to offer. It is this short prayer or belief or trust that dictates the rhythm of this journey into other songs.
“Portrait of My Mother As a Goddess of Ugly Things” has Iliya going on a bold rampage while addressing family issues, betrayal and womanhood, all forming a potpourri of great diction, striking images and metaphors. “Like beautiful walls painted with blood / The last place I felt loved was in my mother’s womb/ Then between her lies that my father was a skillful drummer…” — are some lines that would stay with you until you discover the possibility that “… a man folds into a dimple”.
In “What is War?” Iliya claims that violence is the moth that should leap into our homes… The whole poem is speckled with a sarcasm that keeps budding until the end. And we also find out that the poet is at war, at what virtues are, in a turbulent world. In “After 72 Moons”, the poet, nostalgic, examines what it means to be in love and subsequently on the wrong side of it. “Epiphany”, “Letter From Purgatory”, “Loneliness II”, “Photography”, are other poems that shimmer in this collection. And the titular poem, “The Song We Sing Before We Sleep”, sums up the beauty of the entire offering. Iliya tackles tragedies in enigmatic lines doused in a sea of hope.
Something worthy of note is the fact that Iliya sticks to the basics of free verse and still potently drives home his message in an era awash with budding poets who are eager to experiment new, alien forms and styles, keeping faith with the zeitgeist, contemporary demands of the times. Songs We Sing Before We Sleep is an orchestra of reflective symphonies etched in dignified language. Judging by this debut, Iliya Kambai Dennis shows promise and unarguably has a whole lot to offer in the coming years. Download the book here…
Reviewer’s Biography:
Hussani Abdulrahim is Nigerian. He is winner of the 2019 Poetically Written Prose Contest, a semifinalist for the Boston Review 2019 Aura Estrada Short Story Contest, winner of 2018 ANA Kano/ Peace Panel Poetry Prize and second runner up in the short story category and was shortlisted for the 2019 ACT Award . He also won the 2016 Green Author Prize.
His works are forthcoming or have appeared at Boston Review, 20:35 Africa, praxismagonline, KSR, and Memento (an anthology of contemporary Nigerian poets). He is working on a short story collection and lives in Northern Nigeria.
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