Spanning through twelve rhythmic poems, ‘Of Politics and Power,’ the first part of Olumide Olaniyan’s debut collection of poetry, Lucidity of Absurdity, confronts the state of politics, politicians, rulers and the ruled in the poet’s country, Nigeria. The humanity of the rulers is doubted and even denied. They are not humans but “beasts”:
Who mask as humans
And mingle with the people
They vow to give honey
In barter for power. (‘Dejà vu’)
The opening poem with its title names these beasts ‘Succubus,’ a female evil spirit which “charms us with smiles” and makes the electorates conclude that “this Savior will take away our misery.” Once “our future has been surrendered/into the ballot box,” (‘Surrendered’) Succubus reminds the ruled that she is an evil spirit and not a savior as “we awaken to sight our torn flesh.”
In ‘Octopus,’ corruption becomes a sea creature with eight long tentacles, “jeering at the upright hordes/plunging them into penury.” Everyone seems to hate this beast that “ruins our land” and the rulers make a show of “thrust[ing] at its heart,” with their various anti-corruption rhetoric, which are only but “a sword made of feathers,” yet many hug its tentacles. Even the rabbis and the priests, otherwise holy and wise people, are not safe from the tentacles of this Octopus. They “quibble on its plunders” and “alter creeds to New Age tenets” even as the “Octopus strangles our land with its paws.”
All hope is not lost for the ruled though. Rather, the ruled – in this case, the Nigerian electorate – must identify all their problems in order to solve them. One of these problems is, without any doubt, the “beasts/who mask as humans” to rule a country prided as the Giant of Africa. An even more serious problem is the ‘Sons of the giant.’
They are the ones “guiled by your [the beast’s] charity” (‘Janus!’) and “for a bag of rice/ you [Sons of the giant] sold our tomorrow/ to a mortician.” These sons of the giant are enablers of their own oppression. They are not blameless; they are accomplices in the crime against their being.
In the quietude of the sky
Away from bustling bumpy roads
This avian enwombs affluent voyagers
Enlivened by a shrinking of course
Engulfed by fear of a crash
These rival voyagers glide over the serfs
Away from the helot’s blame, they trade banters
Beneath, the helots, for their sake, bash each other
With batons over banners
In hope for bounty when the voyagers alight. (‘In the Belly)
It is only when the electorate stops hoping “for bounty when the voyagers alight” and identify that attitude as part of their problems that they can “unite to rescue our souls” and “send Succubus back to hell!”
This call becomes even more serious, even more urgent, as Nigerians are getting ready to go to the polls in a few weeks time. Published in 2017, Olaniyan seems to have made this call against the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. It is a testament to the prophetic power of the poet that this call remains relevant even till today. But, it’s not something to be celebrated; it’s something to be bemoaned.
Today, many scholars and poets, people who George Elliott Clarke, frustrated at their inability to understand the relevance of political activism to poetry and Art, in his introduction to the South-African Salimah Valiani’s poetry collection, Cradles – a collection that starts with poetic and poeticized political activism and ends with it – called ‘poetasters’ who might only be read ‘blissfully,’ argue against the political consciousness and activism with which most of our (Nigerian) Literature are riddled with. For these writers and scholars, activism diminishes the art. While I do not aim to weigh in on the Art-for-Art’s-sake ancient argument, it is crucial to point out that the continued relevance of this section of Olaniyan’s collection to Nigeria’s political situation – an indication of the persistent weltering of the country’s politics and governance – underlines the importance of the “activistic” in arts, or, rather, the “artivistic”. An Igbo proverb says that one does not chase rats in a house that’s on fire; same way one does not talk of beautiful flowers when humans are burning.
This is no metaphor or hyperbole. The earth and all in it is truly burning. Our poet is not unaware of this. That is why ‘When the Earth Cries’, the second part of the collection, takes an eco-critical pose. It draws attention to the earth and the environment humans inhabit which the inhabitants plunder just as politicians “pilfer our common treasure.” We are felling the trees, our oxygen source, to get firewood; we are burning the firewood, releasing gases toxic to our lungs, gases that deplete the ozone layer, into the environment. With no trees to restrict her movement, water flows uninhibited into our inhabitants, displacing us just like we have displaced nature, for as Newton said, “actions and reactions are equal and opposite.” The readers are reminded in this part, that “the earth brawls” as “we scoop its blood as energies/unconcerned with its agonies,” before the collection turns to the sour history of slavery.
In the third part of the collection titled ‘Humanity – Slavery and History,’ the unfavourable past that has continued to haunt humanity till this day is looked at through fourteen sad poems. Two poems, ‘Uprooted’ and ‘The Fall of Yesterday,’ delivers a classroom lecture on the history of slavery in a fabulously poetic form. In the first stanza of ‘Uprooted’ we have:
Gunboats roared from the ocean
Men and dogs hurried to the mountains
Women and sheep scrambled to the jungles
Children and chicken dashed behind the huts
Geckos and roaches burrowed into cleaves
Birds and butterflies scurried in disarray
Human merchants are on the prowl again.
This paints a picture close to the tension and apprehension the arrival of the slave traders caused in the minds of the Africans who hitherto lived peacefully at the “realm at the centre of the globe,” “before the fall of yesterday”:
Before the fall of yesterday
This realm at the centre of the globe
Fed its offspring with fish and shrubs
This ocean did not submerge it.
But now, “a yesterday has devoured tomorrow,” and “the murder of the future to sustain the wealthy” is ongoing.
The other twelve poems are devoted to explaining other aspects of slavery, the complicity of the slaves in their subjugation (just like the complicity of the misruled in their misruling), and the lure and gains of resistance.
Slavery dehumanizes. It reduces the slave into: “a tool in the ruler’s saddlebag,” “a tool for power in the grip of others” and one who “licks dirt off paths the ruler spits upon.” The slave’s “wail is of no consequence” and their life’s significance to be determined by the slave-owner. Sometimes, this significance can be determined to be lesser than that of a hibiscus flower– “The king’s hibiscus is water-drenched/yet the serf’s thirst lingers, unquenched.”
Due to this uncharitable nature of slavery, “the slave thirst for freedom” but is afraid to “dare the fiefdom.” “The slave wants new garbs” but is now much accustomed to old dirty clothes that they “fear to cast away his rags.” This fear in the slave brings about silence which is all the slave – the past freed slave, and the modern day slave – needs to remain enslaved. “Ignoble silence is the yoke of weaklings/a quietude that kills” which the poet in Lucidity of Absurdity orders his readers to reject.
In this section of the collection, the poet chose to refer to slave owners as ‘serfs’ and ‘rulers’ and other ‘leadership’ titles instead of as ‘slave owners.’ This follows directly from the first part of the collection, ‘Of Politics and Power,’ where the poet showed that rather than have leaders, Nigeria has what the most charitable of commentators will refer to as ‘misrulers’ at the helm of her affairs. They, this supposed leaders, are dictators who once they “grip the haft/young men they’ll turn into monkeys,” – modern day slave-makers of modern day Africans.
The modern day potential slave, following in the footsteps of the past slaves who fought and secured their freedom, must never be silent or sit on the “clay fence.” The modern day slave must take a stand even if it means falling from the clay fence for “freedom lies in its falling.” It is in this falling that the slave “becomes a deity/walking into a tomorrow” where there are full, rather than fringe liberty for “fringe liberty is a shackle.”
The opening poem of the fourth part pushes one off the cliff of the third part. Here, slavery is no longer something to be despised, scorned and resisted but now something to be yearned for. That’s the nature of love: this shock. ‘Aches and Balms’ is about love and its ability to uplift and demoralize at the same time. It aches, this love; it balms, still this love. Such that the poem-persona is not totally insane when he implores to his lover, “let me be your slave tonight.” Within the seven poems in this section, we learn that “when love suffers neglect” it aches. When love “looks the other way,” “the one who loves me I leave in ruin.” But this same love can make a flying witch of a man taken by it because love can “remove twinges in my head.”
‘Aspects of Humanity,’ the fifth part of the collection, explores the different facets of what it means to be human. Plucking through different branches of the tree humanity, the twenty-two poems contained in this part expose and narrate, lament, advise and pontificate on issues bordering on: human sexuality and sexual abuse; child-bearing, childhood and adulthood; transportation and advancement of technology; the passing of time and death, etc. There is a rich harvest of original oxymorons and paradoxical quotes here (especially with titles like: ‘A Virtuous Vampire,’ ‘The Magnetic Repulsion,’ ‘Aromatic Toxin,’ ‘The Kindness of Death,’ ‘Joy of Insanity,’ etc.) These poems seem to be on a mission to unearth the contradictions found in the different aspects of humanity. It is thus unfortunate that this part of the collection also added to the contradictions it unearths.
For a part that laments (in ‘When Mankind Traps Humankind’) that “a human has been trapped in mankind,” because of the kind of upbringing men receive as men “nurtured to be wild,” it is perplexing to see the poem ‘Aromatic Toxin’ also included in it. In ‘Aromatic Toxin,’ the poet pontificates as to what a woman’s pussy – and by extension, a woman – is. Sex and a woman’s sex organs – the pussy, especially – has been subjected, throughout history, to lots of derogatory terms. Here, it “is a pod of sweet toxin” which leads “men to their ruin,” thus “no one should feast on it.” This characterization, borne out of fear and suspicion of the seductive power of the woman, has led, over the centuries, to the misogynistic and sexist viewing of womankind as impure, destructive, yet, desirable for fun – an alluring death, an Aromatic Toxin. Therefore, to detoxify the woman in order to enjoy the aroma without choking on the toxin, many cultures and religions have subjected womankind to myriads of dehumanizing ordeals. To Nietzsche, for example, “Thou goest to woman? Do not forget your whip.”
Barring the inclusion of ‘Aromatic Toxin’ (which though rich in poetic garlands jars at the inner being) in the collection, Lucidity of Absurdity is a book every poetry lover would love to read. Its rhythms are soothing; its metaphors rich and supple; its language empowering. There are no pretensions in its diction. With a basic knowledge of the English language, a reader has access to the beauty and messages contained in the collection while adding new words to their vocabulary vault. There are also no pretentions as to what the collection seeks to achieve. It does not pretend to be bereft of ideas and ideologies that it seeks to spread, rather, the poet embraces his “activistic” convictions fully in the volume. This is not art, only for art’s sake; this is also art for the (Nigeria) society’s sensitization.
With his release of his second poetry collection, Akimbo in Limbo, in 2020, one can only hope that Olaniyan’s rich voice is here to stay in the Nigerian poetry scene.
Ugochukwu Anadị is a reader who sometimes writes (about reading). His writings have appeared on: Afapinen, Afreecan Read, Afrocritik, Afritondo, ANA Review, Brittle Paper, Black Boy Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Con-scio magazine amongst others.
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