ktravula – a travelogue!

Are We Past the Height of Culture?

The current play on my phone at this moment is a tribute ewì album to the departed Tìmì of Ẹdẹ (Febryary 1899 – May 16, 1975), a literate Yorùbá king in both the western and traditional sense. He was a drummer and a prominent culture custodian. There’s a documentary about him on YouTube as well, which you can see here.

The album was done by Lánrewájú Adépọ̀jù, a prominent Yorùbá poet and contemporary of my father’s — both foremost practitioners of the oral poetic form. Likely released in 1975 or shortly after, to mark the death of the king.

Earlier this morning, I was listening to another work by the same ewì exponent. This time, it was the album he waxed for the coronation of the Aláàfin of Ọ̀yọ̀, Làmídì Adéyẹmí who passed away at 83 in 2022. Adépọ̀jù himself died at 83 two years ago. What was common to both works was the depth of the poetry, the thoughtfulness of the work, and the significance of the documentation that the work have come to represent for those of us not privileged to have occupied the same lifetime as some of these prominent Yorùbá kings.

A few weeks ago, the selection of a new Aláàfin Ọ̀yọ́, in the person of Akeem Abímbọ́lá Ọ̀wọ́adé, was announced. It was, perhaps, that singular event that brought me to contemplation about what we may have lost. Along with the album by Lánrewájú in 1975, the poet Odòlayé Àrẹ̀mú did one titled Aládé Ọ̀yọ́, which I haven’t been able to date. There, too, the lineage of the then newly-selected young Aláàfin was poetically preserved.

In 1977, a new Olúbàdàn was crowned — the third Christian king of the military town. Ọba Daniel Táyọ̀ Akínbíyìí. His reign lasted for five years, ending in 1982. But at the time he was crowned, also one of the Western-educated kings of his time — Odòlayé Àrẹ̀mú waxed poetic in his honour. It’s still one of my favourite albums of his to return to once in a while, produced by Ọlátúbọ̀sún Records.

What the naming of the new Aláàfin Ọ̀yọ́ brought to me in sadness was the absence of any capable cultural practitioner of the type of Odòlayé, Adépọ̀jù, and Ọládàpọ̀ to put the new king in context, and in poetry, for a generation that desperately needs it. Look, for instance, at this collaboration between Túbọ̀sún Ọládàpọ̀ and the aforementioned Odòlayé Àrẹ̀mú when the Ṣọ̀ún Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ was crowned.

or to mark the demise of the Premier Samuel Ládòkè Akíntọ́lá…

Or Àlàbí Ògúndépò’s panegyric tribute to the crowning of the Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀, Okùnadé Ṣíjúwadé in 1980…

Over the last five years, prominent Yorùbá stools have been filled. The King of Ìwó has become a crusader for the Islamic Religion, while the new Ṣọ̀ún of Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ was chosen from a Redeemed Church in the United States. There have been at least four Olúbàdàn of Ìbàdàn kings over the last ten years, none of which have had any contemporary poet, musician, or artists do noteworthy commemorative albums in their honour. It is not just for the royal personalities themselves, mind you. My worry is what this represents for what goes for public art performance today in the Yorùbá culture.

Here are two albums created by Adépọ̀jù and Ọládàpọ̀ to mark the passing of Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀.

Adépọ̀jù:

and Ọládàpọ̀:

Recently, I asked Mọlará Wood, a culture critic, about this phenomenon. What was it, I wondered, that made those times welcoming of these kinds of artistic expression? Obviously, the characters that were celebrated in these notable poetic expressions were important and remarkable characters themselves. Could it be that we have only found mediocre personalities to replace them? Or, also more likely, could we also have run out of original creative thinkers able to wrought remarkable pieces of art in memorial for our departed or emerging culture heroes? Her response, in brief, was that perhaps those were the days of the height of culture.

And that is a depressing thought; that we have indeed peaked, and what is left are the dregs of society with values at variance with the collective need of a society that once thrived on intellection, art, and original creative expression and documentation. While society is being replaced by the sugar-high of popular culture — Afrobeats, Amapiano, Alte, and the rest of the modern saccharine — what is being lost is the worldview and values that once kept our head high, where entertainment was deeply embedded with information, community, and knowledge-sharing, where art was meant to last and to engage, and not just to vainly move.

Shortly before the pandemic, I started work with the Poetry Translation Centre in London to translate a number of important Nigerian oral poetry into English. One of the subjects was Lánrewájú Adépọ̀jù — a natural choice, considering his status in the genre. But what I later found was equally challenging: the near impossibility of translating what makes poetry beautiful in Yorùbá to English. Ocassionally, as you’d see in the excerpt below, the poetry manages to cross over mainly through the strenuous wringing of meaning through English prosody. But for most of his work — and those of his contemporaries — the beauty remains only when the work remains in their source language. This presents the key challenge to those who might respond to the main thrust of this blog with “Perhaps globalization is the saviour, come to save us from traditional Yorùbá poetry; so the dearth of new work should be seen through that lens, and their transmutation through modern music rather than a sign of a confirmed path to extinction. As long as we can write and express ourselves in English, and translate works from and into it, then what’s the problem?”

Well, the problem exists in the lack of new original work. If we were to agree that the culture has become confirmed to a fossilized state where all we have are nostalgic longing for what used to be, and no new creative ferments burst in to shake us out of our complacency, inspire us to new heights, and codify for us in poetic language what the moment means, then maybe we have lost something irretrievable.

I did find, at last, a contemporary work that could perhaps compete with some of the old. It was Kwam 1’s tribute to the departed Aláàfin (see below). Even if the rest of the work didn’t always engage much beyond the deeply moving poetic introduction (a result of my own taste, perhaps), it is heartening that it exists.

But how many more of these do we have before the culture is declared functionally dead?

Poetry Collection: “Edwardsville by Heart”

Since I started this blog in 2009, I’ve imagined a book of travel stories, covering many of the journeys and memories I have made since I first set out of my country, and continent, in search of knowledge and adventure. Sometime last year, I completed one, a book of recollections of one particular period of my life: the three years I spent in the United States first as a Fulbright Scholar teaching Yorùbá and later as a graduate student of linguistics.

Earlier this year, the work was acquired by Wisdom’s Bottom Press, an independent publishing collective based out of Oxford in the UK. It will be released to the public in November this year, followed by a number of reading events in the UK (notably in Oxford, London, Wales, and a few other places as schedule allows).

Needless to say, I am excited for this new journey as a published author of poetry steeped in travel stories. My interest has always been in the preservation of memory, stories, and history. The background of an American experience whose value increases with nostalgia and every new story out of that changing environment is only an added complement. Over the years, many have asked me to share my experience of living in the US as a scholar or as a student, looking for some insight to help their own new journey. I have written on this blog, often, about some specifics. Yet every experience is different and unique. Still, having someone else’s as a reference point doesn’t hurt. It might actually offer a measure of comfort whenever despair shows up, as it often does.

I’ve been grateful to get blurbs for the book from some Nigerian writers whose work I respect, some of who also have some link with Edwardsville in particular or the United States (or Western environments) in general. You can read the blurbs here.

Follow the Facebook page of the book for updates about reading schedules in your area. The first of these happens at Pembroke College, Oxford, on November 7, 2018.

You can now get the book on Amazon here.

A Poem as a Dreamer and Pacifist

By Ikeogu Oke

(Being the Acceptance Speech for the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature)

The Way I Want To Go

What you do you must do on your own.

The main thing is to write

for the joy of it.

– Seamus Heaney, “Station Island”

Father has called and warned me not to go

The way I want to go:

“It is no life you spend among the trees!”

Mother as everyone at home agrees.

And good opinion says the trend of the era shows

That those whose pen must feed must write in prose.

“To write in verse,” they say, “is agony.

For poets,” they press, “do not make money.”

And I have given thought to what they say,

While alone and headed on my way.

The wisdom of the world and age apart,

The truly wise must listen to his heart.

And yet the poet should not deny his pain,

Or fail for lack to stress his fair bargain.

For if poets do not make money,

Then, neither does money make poets.

O World, Thou Choosest Not

O world, thou choosest not the better part!

It is not wisdom to be only wise,

And on the inward vision close the eyes,

But it is wisdom to believe the heart.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart,

Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;

To trust the soul’s invincible surmise

Was all his science and his only art.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine

That lights the pathway but one step ahead

Across a void of mystery and dread.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine

By which alone the mortal heart is led

Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

– George Santayana

Let me proceed by thanking all of you for honouring the invitation to attend this event, and the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited without whose commitment to the growth of Nigerian Literature we might not have gathered here.

I am grateful to the panel of adjudicators for the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature for pronouncing my entry, The Heresiad, as the winner, vindicating my expectation. I believed the entry rule which stated that the adjudication would be based on merit. Merit is a value to which I am strongly attracted and cherish highly but which, alas, Chinua Achebe described as “quite often a dirty word” in our country. And I believe its entrenchment in the affairs of our nation, beyond such adjudication of literary prizes, can have far-reaching transformational effects.

In a world in which we do not always get what we deserve, and fortune does not always favour the most qualified or hardworking, I think we should all feel humble and appreciative for any success we achieve. This, besides happy, is how I feel as the recipient of this honour. To the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, the members of the Advisory Board of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, and the award-giving judges, I say, “An award-winning poet salutes you!”

I thank my publisher, Kraft, our chef of delicious books, for indulging my insistence on perfection. I thank my fellow poets for a great contest, especially my fellow finalists whose calls to congratulate me for winning was for me the hallmark of literary sportsmanship, a profoundly moving gesture. I thank my father, an unceasing fount of fond memories. He taught me the virtues of hard work, steadfastness, self-belief, self-denial and sacrifice. Without his lessons I might not have devoted twenty-seven years working on The Heresiad, running a compositional marathon and expecting no reward beyond the satisfaction, after crossing the finish line, that I had run a good race. I thank my family, especially my wife and children, for enduring the quirks of a restless poet.

The first of the poems I have furnished as an epigraph to this speech has served me as a literary manifesto since I wrote it about fifteen years ago, as a response to the concerns expressed by those who thought my career choice of poetry was a waste of time and tantamount to entering into a life-long pact with penury. Poetry is the only healthy narcotic on earth. I am happy to be addicted to it as shown by my refusal to be swayed by such concerns. I have invoked the poem here hopefully to arouse the contemplation of how one’s resolve to pursue one’s dreams in spite of such concerns is the best decision that can lead to a fulfilled life.

The second, a sonnet by George Santayana, is my polestar of inspirational poetry. I have invoked it here because I believe its cardinal themes of vision, faith, self-belief and resolutely acting on one’s dreams reinforce and anticipated similar themes in my own poem.

That way, we can all see that if I were to say, as part of the use to which I wish to put this historic opportunity to speak to you, that vision, faith, self-belief and resolutely acting on one’s dreams are virtually all one needs to attain one’s purpose in life, and perhaps inspire those among us who still have the courage to dream dreams, especially the young, I would not be a solitary voice in some poetic wilderness.

So you can see that some master, far wiser than I, had said it before me. And that the veracity of his words, even when subjected to logical scrutiny, is proof that the poet does not lie whether he speaks for faith or reason, or in any circumstance whatsoever. And that he perhaps deserves our attention more than we are currently inclined to give it to him – in our own interest.

And need I, as one of such other circumstances of proof that the poet does not lie, point out that the experience I relate in “The Way I Want to Go” regarding my family and “good opinion”, took place only in my imagination, even though it hints at real behaviours? My family members will disavow it if their idea of truth is confined to the literality of events, and infer that the poet lied, and if they lack the understanding that the truth as spoken by poets may be but need not be literal, in the sense of being a rendition or reflection of a physical occurrence or phenomenon.

In the wake of my announcement as the recipient of this honour, I spoke with someone who shared with me the challenges he is facing in becoming a successful writer. From our conversation I drew a hint – I believe rightly – that he would like me to lead him into the secret to success in the literary vocation.

I have also been asked repeatedly, “What kept you going all these years?” by various individuals, some of whom are interested in becoming writers. I believe the question seeks to elicit a similar response from me to that of the acquaintance who shared his challenges about succeeding as a writer with me.

Unfortunately, I do not know the secret to success. Nor do I think that writers would have a different secret to success from the rest of humanity. If I knew such a secret, I would readily reveal it to end the difficulties we all face as human beings in making our dreams fructify. And, not knowing any such secret, I offer these admonitory words, drawn from the depths of my personal convictions, in lieu of my ignorance.

Believe in yourself. Commit to a dream only you have the last say in its survival, so you may not despair even if you must stand alone in its pursuit, ignored by the rest of the world. If they tell you that your dreams are impossible, ignore the first two letters and move on with your dreams. Give all you have to what you do and love it with all your heart. Do it with your whole heart, with integrity, seeking first the kingdom of excellence for which other things should be added to you. But still plan to end up only with the satisfaction of having laboured for the love of your vocation, in case nothing more is added to you. Time is too precious to waste doing something you do not love even if it brings you fortune.

In life you will meet people who will try to snuff out the candle of your dreams. You will meet people who will help to keep it burning. I have been fortunate to meet more of the later type of people and I hope that becomes your lot too. But you have the final say as to how long the candle of your dreams will keep burning, regardless of what others tell you. And never forget that the fruits of vicious dreams often harbour the bitter taste of comeuppance.

There is no greater mission in life than making others genuinely happy, bringing them healthy joy. You are a success however you are able to accomplish this. Those you bring true happiness will ensure your success by patronising the means by which you do so.

Never accept the circumstances of your birth as a limitation to the realisation of your dreams, even if they are more fraught with lack, more underprivileged, than mine. From the age of twelve, in secondary school, I was constrained to earn all the money I paid as school fees from menial jobs because my parents, though responsible and firm in their resolve to give all their six children a good education, could never have earned enough to do so owing to inhibitions imposed by their own underprivileged backgrounds.

I can even say that I am proud of my heritage of an underprivileged background for teaching me the invaluable lessons of self-denial, of delayed gratification, and the transcendence of hard work, far better than I might have been taught had I come from a privileged background. And these, in my view, are important lessons for success.

And if, in spite of the privation associated with being lowborn, I can arrive at the privilege of being the recipient of this extraordinary honour, so can any child born of poor parents, any parent in fact. It can be any child who can set forth at dawn1, set their goals and priorities right, pursue them with single-mindedness, and be ready to crack their palm kernel if no benevolent spirit2 shows up to crack it for them. It can be any child who understands that, as Thomas Carlyle said, “Perseverance is the anchor of all virtues.”

Also, that I stand here today disproves the charge that Nigeria does not reward merit, excellence or hard work. My experience that culminates in this event is proof that it does, that it is actually a land of possibilities in which even improbable dreams can come true in spite of the crying need to make it “a more perfect union” as the former Unites States President, Barak Obama, once said about his country.

It is an experience more sour than sweet, more painful than joyous. It includes waking up one morning about sixteen years ago to realise that my severance benefit from my first job from which I was retired prematurely and placed on pension at thirty-three years, after fifteen years’ untainted service, had been trapped

– and it remains trapped – in Savannah Bank, following its closure for an alleged breach for which the depositors who bore the brunt of the precipitate closure by the authorities were not responsible. It includes being persecuted out of several jobs by bosses averse to propriety in the workplace.

But what does my current experience say? The same land that can rip hope out of your breast can restore it in manifolds if you will not give up on it.

I have a story,

I shall tell it without vainglory,

A story to inspire,

And light men’s souls with fire.

The primary role of the poet is to create beauty with words, like other types of artists whose primary roles are to create beauty through their various mediums of expression. Yet, we know that art is hardly, if ever, unalloyed with functionality. That it is almost always applied and hardly pure. That even its affective function implicates inherent applicability, if utilitarianism. That it is hardly ever strictly an ornament.

And, as poets and other forms of artists, I think we should never cease to ask ourselves if we should be satisfied with merely creating beauty through our work in a world in which ugly occurrences constantly threaten such beauty. To pose it as a question: Should we plant gardens and allow them to be overrun with weeds, or adorn our world with our work and overlook its being blighted by injustice and other ills that may threaten its peace? Or, put differently, can we not be cultivators of beauty as well as what Niyi Osundare calls “the eye of the earth,” using our work to police the earth against harm, while engaging in other possible activities to improve its lot and cultivate its wellbeing? If we say yes to the former and no to the latter, which should be surprising especially for the former, then why do we praise Pablo Neruda’s Spain in Our Hearts3? Why do we commend Pablo Picasso’s Guernica? Why do we acclaim Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story, Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants, and many more of such remarkable works of art which meld their originators’ love for creating beauty with their interest in championing a better world? A Stradivari violin, an Amati, are beautiful objects. But from that beauty we extract music, and our world is better off for it. Art is basically an instrument for transmitting aesthetic pleasure. But it can transmit more. And artists can consciously make it transmit more for the betterment of our world.

If permitted a singular use of metaphorical license, I would describe The Heresiad as a mirror of a poem as a dreamer and pacifist, among other germane inferences that may be drawn from the work. For while defending the various freedoms I think we should all uphold as humans, those freedoms that form the bedrock of liberal values, especially freedom of expression, it urges their exercise with sensitivity to the legitimate feelings and interests of others. And even in the face of an offensive breach of such sensitivity, it encourages supporters of the offender to pacify the offended by acknowledging the offence. It then urges the latter to show leniency, as in the last of its following couplets spoken by one of the loyalists of Reason seeking to prevent the execution of the death sentence pronounced on the author accused of heresy in the poem as an aftermath of his exercising one of such freedoms:

And though I have the will to face their five,

And help our protégé to stay alive,

I’ll rather urge their anger, just but high,

To view his error with a lenient eye.

(Canto II, lines 197-200)

And even in the face of an imminent armed confrontation, the poem creates a hero, Reason, who makes a personal commitment to pursue his interest in saving the author without recourse to arms. Thus:

And Reason, mounted on a higher ground,

Waited, as his anxious thoughts unwound,

And while he waited muttered to himself

(As he focused on a granite shelf):

“I still think that strife cannot be proper;

No weapon fashioned for my use shall prosper;

I’ll go, unhurried, with the one they seek,

Though his hope may now be worse than bleak;

If the power of thought cannot avail,

Then the force of strife must not prevail;

If persuasion cannot help our cause,

Nor, I think, can any lethal force.

To explore the argument of grace – I go,

And take my thoughts for arrows and for bow!”

(Canto III, lines 607-620)

Here, then, lies the essence of the poem as a dreamer and pacifist: its simultaneous envisioning of the de-escalation of conflicts strictly by conciliation and their resolution through personal commitment to eschew the use of arms. In fact, it offers these, within and beyond the bounds of verse, as general principles for engendering peace in the world. They are also reflections of my belief that, though as artists we must fulfil our primary obligation to create beauty through our work, we can also make art more useful by using it to stimulate the evolution of a more liveable world. The poem does the latter by promoting peace (in a context that integrates respect for life) among countless options of such engagement open to artists across the world. And I have tried to do the former by creating such a book-length poem whose every line can be sung and set to music, making it a book-length art song, a musical epic in four cantos that may also be described as a literary symphony in four movements. I call it operatic poetry, a new genre of poetry intended to open new frontiers for its enjoyment. For I consider its action, drama and music primed for realisation – and to be realisable and awaiting realisation – as opera. And I clearly anticipate the materialisation of this artistic vision like the world which, as Santayana reminds us, Columbus found without a chart.

I might not have entered for let alone won this prize but for a friend and fellow writer who read the manuscript of The Heresiad and asked me to submit it for the prize, describing it as “a magnum opus”. Though flattered by the description, I hesitated, explaining that it was unpublished and needed more work before I would consider it publishable. He later wore down my resistance with his gentle insistence. Would we have been here today, I on this side of the proceedings, but for his special encouragement? I doubt it.

To this inspiring friend, Wale Okediran, I dedicate this prize, and to many others like him who offered various forms of encouragement for the twenty-seven years I worked on The Heresiad.

“We must always give back,” Nadine Gordimer, my friend and mentor, said to me at our last meeting before her demise in 2014. To this friend I have given back a token of a poem, entitled “Goodwill and Destiny”, that is also a song. But I have modified it to the following lines for the purpose of this speech and have had it set to music, which I consider the worthiest companion of poetry.

I crave your indulgence to rise and join me and let us read and sing it as believers in the value of goodwill, friendship, gratitude, and as a song of universal brotherhood, and to the glory of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, my Muse, the Ebony Pearl, and Nigerian Literature, addressing the fourth and sixth lines respectively to the male and female next to us as we read and sing:

We are what we are because of others

With whom the heavens steer our lives like rudders.

And may the heavens gift your life a rudder

Like this brother from another mother;

And may the heavens gift your life a rudder

Like this sister from another mother.

________

Footnotes

The phrase “who can set forth at dawn” alludes to a title of a memoir by Wole Soyinka entitled You Must Set Forth at Dawn.
The phrase, “ready to crack their palm kernel if no benevolent spirit shows up to crack it for them”, alludes to a remark by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart about those whose palm kernels have been cracked by a benevolent spirit not knowing that the cracking of palm kernels is hard.
A translation of Espana en el Corazon (Spanish), the original title.

_______

Ikeogu Oke is the winner of the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature (Poetry) for his volume The Heresiad

The Judges’ Report of the 2017 Nigeria Prize

A total of 184 poetry collections were received for this year’s competition.

The seriousness with which the NLNG literary prize is received by the teeming population of writers in Nigeria is a sign that the expectations of writers swing beyond the prize itself to that of portraying their creativity. The prestige, associated with the prize saw the 184 entrants of collections of poetry in various sizes and of diverse themes setting out for the stiff competition. At the beginning, the initial weeding was carried out following one of the primary criteria; quality and validity of publication year.

A total of 101 collections were disqualified at the initial combined sitting of the Advisory Board and the panel of judges for not meeting the basic and fundamental guidelines. 83 closely screened entries were left in the competition and the judges were given a month to come up with the long list of 50 and 25 simultaneously. The next step was to synchronise the shortlist of 11 which the panel carried out in accordance with the set criteria approved by the Advisory Board.

The meeting which saw the emergence of the final list of 3 was long and the scrutiny all encompassing because the panel did not just focus on the quality of production but more on relevance to contemporary Nigerian Literature. The succinct development of Nigerian literature from the classical tradition is something the panel consider an act of brevity and enriching to contemporary Nigerian literature.

At this final phase, we examined the strengths of each of the three books on the final list namely: Ogaga Ifowodo’s A Good Mourning, Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself: Quartet and Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid.

Ogaga Ifowodo’s A Good Mourning published by Parresia Books, focusses on the tragedy, ambiguity and contradictions of human experience recreated from poetic vision and language. The work has been likened to “an itinerary that shifts from one notorious platform of human bestiality to another — from the Slave Trade to the Holocaust, the theatres of war in Palestine and the Congo, and the genocide fields of Rwanda and Darfur and so on”.

Songs of Myself: Quartet by Tanure Ojaide published by Kraft Books Limited explores paradoxes in contemporary times presented in discursive lyricism. It reflects the journey to the deepest vicissitudes of the adventurer himself. Ojaide’s volume directs a vigilant gaze toward the artist, society and the world at large. In its breadth and sweep, it undergirds and reiterates the rich linguistic resources available to the artist from indigenous sources.

Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid published by Kraft Books Ltd, employs the epic form in questioning power and freedom. It probes metaphorically the inner workings of societies and those who shape them. The volume addresses the question of freedom in all its ramifications.

In assessing and ranking the three works, the judges paid close attention to maturity and depth of vision in the execution of themes, and considered the collections holistically rather than scoring high for one or two poems. After much consideration of these criteria, the competition was narrowed down to between Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself:Quartet and Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid.

Oke’s poetry collection reveals a conscious/deliberate manipulation of language and philosophy in the style that reminds us of the writings of great Greek writers of Homeric and Hellenistic periods. Ojaide’s collection refreshes in its day to day experiences of the ordinary man/writer, his travels and other cross-gender exploits. The collection explores paradoxes in contemporary times presented in discursive lyricism. Ikeogu stylistically reaches out to classicism, and Ojaide, to traditional quintessential orature. Both seem to complement each other and collectively reveal and reflect the highest level of poetic craftsmanship in Nigeria. The two authors and their works demonstrate the scope and scale of ambition which The Nigeria Prize for Literature deserves. In their respective ways they push and extend the boundaries of the practice of the art of poetry and of poetry’s engagement with society.

The judges found this seeming complementarity quite appealing and considered recommending both works as a tie for the award

However, the judges went further to apply decisively and scrupulously the Assessment Criteria for the 2017 The Nigeria Prize for Literature competition in their minutest detail thus:

Assessment Criteria for 2017 The Nigeria Prize for Literature competition

Scope

Themes/subjects with regard to relevance to society
Time (historical, contemporary and topical)

Maturity and depth of vision

Seriousness of content
Handling of language

Unity and coherence of content
Thematic engagement

Artistic commitment
Social commitment

Creative use of language

Mechanical correctness of use of language
Diction
Imagery and other poetic devices
Contribution to Nigerian Literature
Content
Technique

Quality of production

Physical
-Design/presentation
– Quality of binding

-Print quality, choice and size of font, readability

After diligent considerations and critically objective application of the guidelines and criteria, the judges decided to recommend Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid as the 2017 winner of The Nigeria Prize for Literature. This decision is based on its apt topicality, relevance, artistic heft and the pursuit of artistic provenance. In a world of increasingly threatened by encroaching totalitarianism and even bare-faced tyranny and intolerance, the wit, wisdom and message of the The Heresaid are infinitely crucial.

It is our hope and goal that the kind of vibrancy which we have found in the collections of poetry submitted is a vital evidence that NLNG is making unprecedented difference in the intellectual development of Nigeria and Nigerian today.

The 2017 Literary Criticism Competition

The Panel of Judges for the Poetry competition was also charged with the task of assessing the entries for the 2017 Literary Criticism Prize. Compared to the 184 entries received for the Poetry competition, the Literary Criticism entries numbered a paltry five! Of these five, three were disqualified. The guidelines for submission specified that the essays to be submitted must be written not more than three years prior to the year of competition namely nothing published before 2014. The three disqualified essays were published between 2010 and 2012 contrary to the stipulation in the guidelines. The judges considered just two essays abysmally inadequate for a competition of this magnitude. Therefore, no recommendation is made for this award in 2017. The judges wish to further draw the attention of tertiary institutions in Nigeria to the paucity of the responses to this competition as a direct reflection on those tertiary institutions particularly the universities. It is our hope that responses will be a lot better in future from professors and lecturers in our more than one hundred universities in Nigeria. It is a challenge that they should be glad to embrace!

PANEL OF JUDGES

Prof Ernest Emenyonu (Chairman, Panel of Judges)

Dr Razinatu Mohammed

Tade Ipadeola

Prof Abena Busia (External Consultant)

ADVISORY BOARD

Prof Ayo Banjo (Chairman, Advisory Board)

Prof Ben Elugbe

Prof Jerry Agada

Nigeria Prize for Literature 2017: The International Consultant’s Report

by Abena P.A Busia

Finalists:

Ogaga Ifowodo: A Good Mourning (Origami Books/Parresia Publishers Ltd, Lagos Nigeria 2016); Tanure Ojaide: Songs of Myself (Kaftgriots/Kraft Books Ltd, Ibadan Nigeria, 2015); Ikeogu Oke: The Heresiad (Kaftgriots/Kraft Books Ltd, Ibadan Nigeria, 2017)

This has been a surprisingly difficult decision as each collection has very strong merits to recommend it for this prestigious prize. The three volumes, though very different, are the work of three extremely accomplished poets who in fact have significant aspects in common. I single out as the most salient of these traits a firm belief in the place of poetry in the service of social justice, and the desire, shared by each of them, to forge a poetic form that can contain the often difficult subject matter of the worlds they interrogate, within their structures. I discuss them here in alphabetical order by author.

Ogaga Ifowodo: A Good Mourning. The thoughtful intelligence of the arrangement of these poems, is one of the strengths of the volume though it is necessary to be diligent about reading through the whole collection because in the end the opening poems, though they capture well both the exuberance (History Lesson) or the bewilderment (Perfect Vision) of youth, are in the end weaker poems than the ones we find towards the end such as the poignant sympathy evident in the details of Algiers, April 2000 and A Rwandan Testimony. These poems arranged to unveil with a growing sensibility to a larger world than the one in which we begin. Or rather, what they succeed in doing is taking us on the poet’s journey as the outside world which form the fantasies of childhood become experienced through all the ambiguity and contradictions the poems make us witness. There are wonderfully wrought juxtapositions as in the through line of song in “Where is the Earth’s Most Infamous Plot” which opens the third section of the collection. Impressive also is the evident experimentation in form and prosody though the end results are uneven in some of the poems, in others, such as Liberation Camp the containment suggested by the strict form works with evocative brilliance when we reach the last line. However, in the end, I rank this collection third.

Tanure Ojaide: Song of Myself. This collection displays such mastery in its presentation of the varieties of form and subject matter and yet still remains a unified whole. Clearly a master of his craft, Ojaide’s brief forward explicating the grounding of his quartet in in the traditional compositions of udje poets is instructive and succeeds in guiding us to a way of reading that enriches the experience. Everything is indeed a metaphor and Ojaide explores his mother hen of a muse with remarkable effect. As with the other two collections, a sympathetic poet’s eye sees with clarity both the quotidian and the grand and finds a way to keep them harnessed together. Ojaide is a painter with words and his poetry leads you into the places he walks, talks, eats with a clarity that makes you an occupant of all those spaces. And particularly in Book II, Song of Myself, where all the poems offered are in carefully controlled couplets the narrating poet, grounded in his own markets and homesteads comments freely on everything the affects and infects his private and public worlds. Lovers and politicians all are drawn into a fine web of shared observations and thus responsibilities. His world is a capacious world of caring whether for the drowned at Lampedusa or the wind that still blows, his poems bear witness to the truth that “so many memories assault me not to forget the beauty I have seen”. And most assuredly this is demonstrated also through the variety and number of love songs contained in the volume. But these loves and not romantic, or sentimental, they are fierce, contradictory, honest; born of a life that recognizes “Everywhere isn’t easy to reach”.

Choosing between Ojaide and Oke has been hard, and I confess to vacillating between them enough to ask if the prize can be shared. Both of them make it explicit through their titles and introductory comments that they see their volumes as a coherent whole rather than individual parts, that is they have both given us different experiments in long-form poetry, and have both succeeded admirably in the control of a difficult project.

Ikeogu Oke: The Heresiad: This is a bold and wonderful experiment whose great strength also could have been its great weakness. That Oke manages to create a poem that keeps quite strictly over 100 pages to the lyric pentameter and still hold the attention of the reader is a singular achievement. The experiment in lesser hands could have led to a deadening of the senses. The volume itself is structured on a great conceit; a bold venture in defense of the art of poetry itself. The narrator is a griot narrating a great battle between supporters and detractors in defense of the humanities, and has succeeded in creating a modern epic. The mastery of form is a tour de force exemplary of the dedication to the craft the poem is inscribed to defend. It would have been wonderful if this work had not only been published in print, but had been released with an audio version because indeed its singular achievement is its sustaining of narrative that displays the arguments of the contending parties, and yet at the same time keeps so clear the voice of the griot. And we can indeed hear the musicality in the rigor of the lines, and the absoluteness of the rhyming scheme of heroic couplets sustained throughout the work. In the end, if there must be a choice, my selection goes with this collection for the technical feat it performs. The deciding factor was the inclusion of the music, which I attempted playing and in doing that it brought home to me how very carefully the performativity of this work has been thought through; Oke has made ancient forms new again.

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Professor Abena Busia is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist, lecturer, and diplomat, currently the ambassador of Ghana to Brazil. She is the external consultant on the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature (Poetry)

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