Remembering Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba (center)in 1960, Image via Wikipedia Commons

The name Lumumba didn't come to me in a book. It came to me in the voice of the famous Nigerian Juju musician, IK Dairo, who was one of the regulars who crooned from my parents' Phillips stereo player. I used to enjoy singing 'Iku Lumumba' without understanding the significance of the event or the political personality involved. It was many years later, I would learn about the man Lumumba, his fight and his vision.

Here's a brilliant feature, in memory of the man, Patrice Lumumba (1925 - 1961) in Africasacountry.com.

Let us remember.

2016: the year of the poetry, 'simply beyond words.'

As 2016 winded down, one of the many questions on the lips of many literati was if Bob Dylan was deserving of the Nobel Prize? In the article, “Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature” published in the New York Times, expressed many perspectives, one of which was how the debate over Bob Dylan’s lyrics as poetry is not new. It also explained how for many years, scholars have devoted time to analysing his music, especially as the musician has often “sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics.” 

Now, despite Dylan’s unacceptance as a poet in some quarters, and with the many contentions on the literariness of his works, there’s been a group arguing for Bob Dylan as a brave poet reaching the soul of poetry in his songs. In the aforementioned article, it was mentioned that “The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist.” The article also stated that Billy Collins, the former Unites States poet laureate is quoted to have said that Mr Dylan deserves recognition not just as a songwriter, but as a poet. “Most song lyrics don’t really hold up without the music, and they aren’t supposed to,” Mr Collins said in an interview. “Bob Dylan is in the 2 percent club of songwriters whose lyrics are interesting on the page even without the harmonica and the guitar and his very distinctive voice. I think he does qualify as poetry.”

Now, flashback to an Op-Ed written by Bill Wyman in 2013, titled, “Knock, Knock, Knockin’ on Nobel’s Door”, where Wyman argued that Bob Dylan should get a Nobel Prize. He wrote; “If the academy doesn’t recognise Bob Dylan — a bard who embodied the most significant cultural upheaval of the second half of the last century — it will squander its best chance to honour a pop poet.” The Nobel seemed to agree with his point of view, but it would remain one of the most controversial picks for the academy in recent times.

Then it happened, in 2016, Bob Dylan is announced as a Nobel Laureate, and the world of literature fell apart; the Dylan-deserves-the-award and Dylan-is-not-deserving-of-the-award. A war happened on the internet, with mixed reactions resulting in a cacophony of tweets, facebook posts and several spurious essays, long, short and medium, on how low the mighty Nobel Prize has fallen. Yet, those who believed the prize went to a deserving ‘writer’, included Joyce Carol Oates, who is herself a perennial Nobel choice, who was even rumoured as a likely choice for the 2016 award based on numerous betting sites went on to describe Dylan’s win as “an inspired choice.” 

Ultimately, the announcement, for many in the literati, was a departure from the accepted – you know literature should be judged as books. There were also echoes of ‘imperialism’, mostly by a lot of African intelligentsia who believed the award should undeservedly have gone to the continent-wide renowned writer, Ngugi wa Thiongo. There were also writers like Feargus O’Sullivan who believed it was the Scandinavians displaying an age-long romance for America’s counterculture and in effect, they needed to award the ‘hero’ of their youth. He writes, “Recognizing Dylan as literary luminary validates a generation’s enthusiasms—and shows the world exactly what Sweden’s cultural elite really warm to.”

As for Otosirieze-Obi, in “Imperialism-in-Artistry: Bob-Dylan’s Nobel win is proof Adichie is right about Beyonce,” – he believes the award is another mental-dominance of the West via art. While one wonders how much of an unconvincing argument this is, considering that the Africa he refers to—the Africa of his generation, is fast becoming a continent where a large percentage of its poetry, desperately aligns to suit MFA programmes, American magazines, and contemporary American poetry, fighting desperately to fit in and find acceptance on social media. In any case, Obi’s argument is that awarding the prize to Dylan, confirms that “literature is of secondary relevance in a world-blessed with music…” A rather unclear statement, for what is literature to an African without music? Isn’t African literature steeped in songs, chants and a repertoire of performances? Well, then again, Otosirieze-Obi’s Africa is different it is Americanised – it is a world living under the influence of pop music from the West, finding validation from the West and earning distinction by throwing invectives without a knowledge of social history to its literary heroes, while desperately seeking to unleash itself from the shackles of apish writing. In that regards, a Nobel Prize like Bob-Dylan’s reiterates the intellectual limbo of (t)his generation.

Then again, it could be the fact that Bob Dylan is first-of-all a musician. In today’s world, a good ear is needed to distinguish the pop music where the lyrics are simplistic and banal. But let’s assume we all have good feelings of the soul-stirring lyrics of Dylan, would it once again stir the question of where to draw the line between poetry and music, which is a never-solved-problem. Or it could be that too many times, Dylan has expressed that he has a closer affinity to music even when he published his books, a collation of his many worlds, where he summarised himself as the performer of words. Unfortunately, you either are a poet or a musician in the context of the world—a fast changing world, hypertexting and lyricizing its own art. The question then remains, why would anyone give a literature prize to a man who insists he is a musician? Can one be a poet without calling himself one? 

Should one follow the argument that poets, generally, being self-effacing, helps Dylan succeed in leading a double-life, one in which he does not have to hide himself, and one in which he can live to contend his authenticity, as a musician, Dylan knows to draw attention to his form, but as a poet, he’d rather cling to a recondite personality. As Wislawa Szymborska wrote in her Nobel Prize Lecture, “The Poet and the World,” 

“Contemporary poets are sceptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times, it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognise your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself ... When filling in questionnaires or chatting with strangers, that is, when they can't avoid revealing their profession, poets prefer to use the general term "writer" or replace "poet" with the name of whatever job they do in addition to writing.” 

In one of the most popular quotes of James Joyce’s Ulysses, he wrote that the "The Supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life it springs." In essence, Bob Dylan may not write poetry as we know it, but his lyrics have profoundly influenced American literature and crossed borders to fill emotional lacunas. 

Now, I am one of those that believe in oral literature, as it is all around me. I am a Yoruba woman, the literature of my culture in its oral form is alive and representative as well. A culture that sings poetry and chants its praise, so much that even names can unravel strings of metaphors. In that sense, writing only expands folk literature, it does not define it. So who says literature should be written. Wyman in his far-sighted essay, Knock…wrote, “Mr Dylan just writes pop lyrics. Actually, Mr Dylan writes, full stop. Why discount what has been written because of where it ends up.”

The American-Nigerian poet, Olu Oguibe also wrote on his Facebook page, the ambition all along for many poets is the song. The basic truth is that many poets are continually aiming to create rhythm either in sound or in images, they try to write songs. This is what the Nobel Prize Committee recognised. In an interview, he expressed that this was an aspiration;

“Music is the only thing that’s in tune with what’s happening,” he told an interviewer that summer of ’65, as he would tell others during those months. “It’s not in book form, it’s not on the stage.” And to another the following year: “I’d never written anything like [‘Rolling Stone’] before and it suddenly came to me that that was what I should do.… After writing that, I wasn’t interested in writing a novel, or a play…I wanted to write songs.… I mean, nobody’s ever really written songs before.” (Art)

For me, Bob Dylan’s music is a rich source of poetry performed as folksongs, preserving a vital part of America’s culture in everyday language. As Jon Pareles writes "As much as any literary figure to emerge in the 20th century, he has written words that resonate everywhere: quoted by revolutionaries and presidents, hurled by protesters, studied by scholars and taken to heart in countless private moments."

And for anyone to assume as Obi wrote, that “the writing life of loneliness and sweat and hard work that doesn’t always pay off…” is to imply that Dylan woke up with his songs ready and with a now creative process to it. This in itself is artistic bigotry, which undermines the argument that writing has lesser patronage than the other art forms like “music, acting and sports,” as he writes.

Of course, there are many writers who would always deserve the Nobel and many of them would not get it, just like some of the world’s greatest writers did not. Writers like Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Chinua Achebe and several others. 

The other argument that Bob Dylan would not need the money brings further demotion to the art of our beloved writers. Some believe the award was more of a waste. Why didn’t the Nobel Committee think of Ngugi wa Thiongo? While the betting sites might play up hopes year-in-year-out, but Ngugi stands on the pulpit of a deserving recognition, not a clamour for a desperate Africans literati, singling out the Nobel as the institution to determine our honour roll call.

Ngugi is a worthy man. He is a cultural representation and so be it. The prize money would do a lot, but we must not turn our man of honour into a dishonour, by limiting his worth into one deserving only of pecuniary compensation. The African literati should not ‘need’ an award for a writer of Ngugi’s stature, he should deserve it. Ngugi deserves the honour, not compensation. It is important to state categorically, that a man like Ngugi is no less a god with or without a Nobel Prize. He stands as a reminder of what it means to be a living legend. 

Let’s also remember that Alfred Nobel asked the prize should be given “the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction” – interpret this as a work which has character of place and identity, a work which has ‘built’ and created and inspired and remodelled himself outside the context of the usual. 

While, many may now choose to ignore it, Dylan has long ago been seen as a poet singing his lines, and academics – many who cried foul and departure to the written muse, know of colleagues, or have even taught Dylan in their class. In conversation with Professor Nduka Otiono, he expressed that Mr Dylan’s work was admirable for him, for its “poetic breath” and this led him to teach him as a poet in an undergraduate class” in his university in Canada. The internet also carried a story of Professor Richard F. Thomas, who teaches his students Dylan, putting him in the context of Homer and Virgil.'

One thing is constant, Bob Dylan was influenced by literature and he has influenced literature. He has been more of a bardic poet, offering his poetry into the depths of millions of minds. He wasn’t awarded a prize for this written books, he was awarded a prize for the poetry in his songs. "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

Today, we read a lot of poetry that are in a battle with themselves--finding meaning, lacking soul and shifting shapes to fit into literary magazines and social media likes, I think tThe Nobel Committee this time reminded us, that indeed the aspiration, was the song.

READ HIS BANQUET SPEECH HERE

Two Photographs

Here I am, listening to renowned Professor of Philosophy: Professor Sophie Oluwole analysing the re-invention of African philosophy in Western texts with fellow postgraduate research students, after the book presentation Weighing the Cost of Pin Making: Ulli Beier in Coversations written by Remi Omodele (ed) at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.

Occupying ArtSpace RoundUp #3

Adolphus and I

Jumoke, Didi and Ayo

Joel and Sola

The ArtSpace Roundup held yesterday at the Goethe Institut. It was the first opportunity to present and discuss the Silent Majority Project to the public.  Didi Cheeka was also at the event to discuss a documentary he's making on the violence going on in Northern Nigeria--based on his theory of migration and socio-cultural ecology.


The Silent Majority Project is a collaborative endeavour between four artists. The first level is between a painter and a photographer, another between a photographer and a poet, and the last level integrate the ideas of the four artists in the work of a videographer.

Two poem from the Silent Majority project.

1

A dream that stands have known many waters

And hope learns to swim in bellies of waves

It sets a smile on the mind of the sea

Walks on stilt and carries faith into men’s future

Where time ferry dreams into new waters.

2

Dreams brought us here, and we arrived

With no enthusiasm for things that stir thoughts:

 Currents, currencies, concurrently drift us

Into consonance, where we learn to be dreams.

I would not at this time express the challenges and joys of working with another artist as it is not the intention of this blog entry. Perhaps, I was ready to work even under inevitable circumstances. My belief is that art in any form should become a ladder for others to climb into creative realms beyond the creators’ imagination, and this would aptly describe the journey of the Silent Majority Project that began with Sola Otori (Painter/Photographer) in 2005.

Sola met Adolphus (Photographer) at an event, and he expressed his desire to start a creative enterprise where he can enhance the creativity of the Almajiri children that are found mostly in Northern Nigeria. At this time, he was serving as a Youth Corper. 

It took two years for the project to get considered, and it was in 2009 that any work would even start on it. It also moved to the South-West of the country after Adolphus suggested the first project should be in Makoko—an area he was a bit familiar with as a journalist. They made several trips to Makoko--spanning nine months. At this period, they succeeded in teaching some teenagers in the community, photography skills and also bringing other artists to inspire them. They did this without funding from anywhere or anyone.

On my part, it happened that I needed to work with a photographer, as I was expanding my understanding of the human condition. At first, I began initiating my idea with Toye Gbade photographer, but he needed to work on other projects at the time—so I sought out my friend, Jude Anogwih at  the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos (CAC) and he introduced Adolphus to me.  The instant we met, we found a meeting point. Adolphus loves what he does. He lives photography. 

After our first meeting, I felt all I needed to do was interpret the Urban Space of Makoko through Adolphus’ photographs and Sola’s video camera, but I found myself making some journey to Makoko and even performing poetry on the water while interacting with the inhabitants.  There was a whole lot I learnt from this interaction. 

The outcome of their workshop was that some of the students are using their skills effectively: two of them were entered for the Etisalat Amateur Photography Competition, and were shortlisted among the best 25 nationwide, one of the students from the project is now employed as a part-time photo studio photographer while pursuing his academic ambition, another works in a Maternity Home where she’s developing a photography project.

The latest on the project is that Joel Benson (Videographer) is now making a documentary of the project.  The Silent Majority project  reiterates that ideas  would stand on their own, only when we make them feel their feet and tell it to walk.  

Thanks to Ayo Arigbabu (Architect and Publisher of Dada Books) and the Goethe Institut. Yesterday, became  the first time, the four artists involved would get  together to talk over the project. 

One question which came up many times yesterday in different shades, was the reason behind the project.  I believe this comes from the suspicion with which anyone presenting the ‘slum’ of any particular place in Africa is being viewed at this time. It appears, there is a new ‘concern’ that artists should ‘brand’ the continent and introduce people to the refurbished Africa. There's even growing outright condemnation of this kind of art, as it appears to be favourably in line with what the West wants. 

It is however sad that those who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of their people—some of them having grown up in places even similar to that which is portrayed in their work, may be discouraged from expressing the abject contempt and the disregard with which the existence of a people are viewed and then neglected by the appropriate authorities. There are indeed artists who have few interactions with Western needs--of imaging, and are simply concerned with expressing what the environment throws (and/or) threw at them. Doing otherwise would in fact be conditioned and writing for patronage. 

So, this project for Adolphus, Sola, Joel and I is integral in getting a deeper level of human understand Makoko beyond the real versus media propagated poverty enshrined in it.  The choice of Makoko other than the many ‘slums’ which abound in Lagos is simply because it captures even more than anything, a distant yet interesting imagery on our minds—and at varying times.

Makoko itself is a city. Moss Hart in his play Act One did write that, “The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.” Makoko is a city that exists despite the inexistent social infrastructures. It has called for attention, reaching far across the borders of this country—actually it is one of the most visited NGO attractions, but the people we met are men, women, children with dreams like you and I.

Welcome back from the break. (Er….who went on break?)

I must say it’s good to be back anyway. I have a good feeling about this year. 

My novel, which I have been redrafting for a while is still on and it’s looking pretty and then ugly and pretty again. I am also tidying up bits on my next collection of poems, which hopefully should be out January next year or late December.  I must confess that it is a collection I have enjoyed working on. I started it by writing a line a day and at times two. Perhaps as time goes on, I’ll post some of the poems in the collection on this blog and would appreciate your comments. And there is also the collection of twelve short stories for the road I’m working on. That is the interlude that comes between my editing and poetry, a sort of pep when the brain is sour. 

Toye gbade and I would be starting a column in a Nigerian newspaper. It's going to be a collaboration of photography and poetry. The little work we've done behind seems rather interesting and I look forward to discovering the undiscovered in it. 

I do know that this is a year we will all find pleasure in...especially if the Nigerian elections come out right.

Tade Ipadeola's Quatrains

Well, there's a certain literary accomplishment that posterity may use as the reference point for a poet or which the poet will assert to her(him)self as an intellectual pivot. Well, in the course of achievements, it is my pleasure to showcase Tade Ipadeola's latest poetic pilgrimage. Four Quatrains from Sahara Testaments.


Tade is currently working on 1, 000 quatrains and our share to that fame which posterity would grant him is that it appears here first. (Okay, aside the facebook appearances of the poems).

Of course, there are many poets who have attempted grand works like this, either as an attempt to searching self, or Self.  Nostradamus wrote 942 stanzas to predict the future. The sections were grouped into centuries and each century had 42 quatrains. Rumi, the famous mystical poet of the 13th century was credited with writing 2, 000 quatrains and then there is the well-known translation of Omar Khayyam's poems by Edward J. Fitzgerald, popular as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. 

For now enjoy Tade's poem.... 

CHAPTER XXXIII

I

Clinical light scrubs reinforced glass at the atrium
Where Goldschmidt and his brood meet death
In elegant equations, the amplified abecedarium
Pregnant as protocol, tasks mortal breath.


Spirit and men sail through rafts of bevelled books
Expounding the calculus of atoms, elemental speed
Degrees at which rarefied neutron cooks,
The right mantra to make electrons bleed.


One day, midsummer, their guarded onomasticon
Registered a name so French, the atrium brightened
With romance. The fellow brought a lexicon
Radiant as radium, to the table, he enlightened


Rapturously, on a world as yet untouched
By the miracle of the atom bomb, a perfect
World in which to test death. He clutched
Proprietorially, a map of my Sahara like a prefect.

Writing, feeding and filling in

I once asked a friend, and an 'uncle' in this business of writing, how he copes with being a journalist, owner of a Public Relations company, editor, and reviewer (and some other things I might have missed) while chunking out numerous poems and even short stories. He smiled slyly like he has the key to a stolen chest. It took a while, but now I have interpreted that smile into; boredom of routine gives credence to your emotion and you come home writing furiously like it is the only hope to staying alive. 

There’s also the place of reading—while others watch the sorry sight of the city and its journey into renewal, the inhibited writer is engrossed in a book on a city bus, even where she’s fastened between two ample-sized commuters who can’t understand why anyone is bent on reading, in that state; hot weather, stuffy bus and smelly roadside. Nah!

But, faced with the music of either dance or drown and strangled daily with ideas on the road to subsistence. I keep my sanity with reading on a bus anyhow. 

Time is short these days and it is not about dying or growing old. It is about not knowing where the next Other project will take me and how long, bearing in mind that only a living soul can write, so here I am fighting between proposals and poetry and the new ideas that boggle my mind for narration. 

At times, I fear that I must come across as a bit weird to my clients, but one thing I have always reminded myself is; dedication to what you do is very important. I seem to have fared well, as I get a pat on my back and a pay cheque (that keeps me hoping for the big one). I am of faith that there’s some sunshine there.

I am certainly not the only writer who has each time pondered over why such a big burden of seeing what others don’t see, yet be denied as much pay check to even cater for humble needs, except you follow the rule of being ‘unnecessarily lazy and find a decent job.’ After all, it's just a romantic notion of reality written in stanzas or into a story.

Writing is a decent job! There are no smudges. (Except when the job is done and the reviews are unfriendly of course). And seriously, don't the many sleepless nights count. In those times of needful solitude; how does one explain that the absentmindedness and daydreams are as important to my work as endless dinners to meeting new clients are essential. 

I am going to make a New Year resolution to remain a full-time writer next year in Nigeria. I am also going to learn the sax and build myself a gramophone and rewrite the Theory of Relativity and write poetry on the walls of Lagos and anyway, from then on, I don’t think it is going to be hard introducing what I do to people henceforth—I am a poet and I just finished writing a novel, which is in itself, still a work-in-progress until published. I do a bit of this and that and, I write.

Poets should not write novels.

  It is not like anyone has made it a law yet; it is simply the surprise that meet the utterance, should a poet volunteer information that she has just completed a novel. In a way, there’s almost something licentious in her revelation and in some quarters, Janus-faced. It’s almost like having more than one lover. But then having more than one lover and keeping them would mean a level of mental and demonstrative dexterity.

By now, you know the said poet is my humble self (It is the only title I’ve ever really given myself, pardon the show-off).  There’s a bit of introspection that bring into bits the sole intent of why one ever set out to write in the first place.

In interviews, there’s much easier formulation based on the journalist’s question some abruptly intelligent sounding statement may come to fore, or even one that may label one as a fluke. There are no rules to this question types; maybe a little pondering over and over and over, and a constant reminder that it’s the most meaningless reason to hang my life on. But in truth, I have never tried to explore the question, other than times when I need to check that the word ‘principle’ still exists in my vocabulary. (It is not a tidy world today. I am sure you’ll agree).

But to keep a fair share of the question answered, I will say I do not know when I began to write, for it is a long time now, but I know something I have always wished to do is write as well as I imagine. And in any case, poetry remains for me the closest textual/graphic image to achieving that and even now as I complete my novel, I am looking desperately for a way to connect it to poetry. But you don’t force these things; it is not exactly difficult to see from Lola Shoneyin's debut as a novelist that she is a poet. (So?)

Now, with a novel off my hand, and still struggling to raise money for research of a poetry narrative I am working on, I look at November and I can say, bring it on 2011.  It is a month to go and it still seems too soon to say that anyway.