Poet: Prof Remi Raji-Oyelade
Title: Sea of my Mind
Year of Publication: 2013
Pages: 85
Publisher: Kraft Books
Reviewer: Olutayo IrantiolaThe anthology has a total of fifty poems which was divided into these subdivisions: Introit, Waves, Ebbs, Flows and Recessional. It is important to say that this collection has many short poems; the longest of the poem is the Road to Gombe with 46 lines
It is only the sea that has these traits
used in classifying the poems. The sea is the society and the mind represents
the poet himself. The poet’s experience is hereby presented in this anthology.
The introit is a call to the literary feast
is about the poet being a journey. The journey stated here could be
psychological, emotional, academic, forced, fated or willing journeys. The poem
opens thus:
Some journeys
are taken without travelling;
Some travelling
happen without journeying.
For a target-driven individual, some of
the products of his journey include: path-finding, following. The poet also
made a reference to the exploits made by his ancestry. Sometimes the result to
be achieved on a journey is not known by the traveler but the mindset of
achieving propels him. Our journey in the anthology is therefore a journey of
the mind for the reader which would transport them beyond their thought from
and still remain on the same spot:
I commit you,
therefore, to the mind,
Of motion and
encounter, of shuttling better spaces,
The surprising
activity of discovery,
Of moving
without moving.
This poem is concluded by the reality of
human life where he encounters pleasures and pains of leaving and returning
from any journey. Our lives are not entirely bed of roses with and without
journeys.
The sojourner’s pledge is a poem of five
lines divided into two folds- the first half is a prayer of success as he goes
on the journey. As African, we pray about a lot of things regardless of the
religious affiliation:
Arise my feet,
do not go where the landscape suffers a rift
Don not hide,
when the libation with earth is due, do not shift
The other part is the commitment of the
poet to the journey he is embarking upon, getting solution to people’s problems
irrespective of difficulties, to make meaning out of nothingness:
I make a pledge
this day, to rekindle hope in the hard ground
To swim in
dreams, breathe life, to find rhythm where a river is
Found.
There are instances of translations of
Yoruba sayings in this anthology; these are from the day to day Yoruba nuances
examples of these are:
“Arise my feet, do not go where the
landscape suffers a rift” this is a major prayer for the Yoruba which is said as,
“ka ma tele ni biti o ti loju”. This
means that the poet cannot be separated from his cultural background. Snapshot
is in five-parts; each of the poems carries complete meaning as short as it is.
Snapshot I, page 23, is about inner struggle, the struggle seems so silent but
it is very contradictive and it is individualistic in nature:
There is a noisy
waking in silence…
Men walk in the
thicket of their thought
Snapshot II, page 24, is about the seeds
of songful crops which birds had fed on as such they no more lack words and
they have great medley of words:
A thousand
thickets of seeds
the birds who
perch on my barn had enough
in their throats
the brocade of songful crops
i know no hunger
in the famine of words
i have swallowed
a market of melodies
Snapshot III, page 25, is a continuation
of the second part. The poet swallowed the throat of the songbird. The tongue
now offers blessing to the land in turn. The sky is described as a “cotton of
colours” which can be linked to the element of nature in rainbow after rain had
fallen and this is in the last verse, “in the last breath of the rains, there
you stand.”
Snapshot IV, page 26 talks about “the
last wink of the day” which is the bright hour of the day that gives way to the
wide-eyed moon in line 3.
in the last wink
of the day, there you walk,
the wide-eyed
moon, the coral brightness…
the rivers run
because they hear your steps
now there will
be a gurgling beneath
creatures in
combat in want in dream in desire in longing…
Snapshot V, page 27, the person, who the
mountain would appear to is unknown, has
a happy path, valley of dream which implies fulfilled expectations and the
distance from the war game into the new ceremonies of light and love. The poem
ends on the note of the different melodies from the birds.
In these series of poems, Snapshot,
natural elements like thickets, thorns, limbs, foot, seeds, throat, crops,
songbird, tongue, finger, sky, rains, moon, rivers, mountain, valley and birds
are all used metaphorically. The beauty of these poems is the brevity of each
of it, the ability to compress it all into one poem, the ability of each poem
to stand on its own, the use of small letters to start the verses of the poem.
“The Road to Gombe” , page 28, is a poem
about the traveling experience of the poet to Gombe State from his base which
is Ibadan, Oyo State. Due to the absence of an effect rail system in the
country, such journeys are done on the road, the poet traveled this long windy
road mentioning the many districts, towns, villages etc. The flora and fauna of
the trip was also mentioned:
Past the forest,
Past the log
greenness of Tigi,
To the lush
valley
And the lustful
hills and bends
Despite these good descriptions, the
road turned deathtraps was also mentioned showing the dangers of such long
travels on road, the dangerous bends and the road laden with potholes. The
journey also experienced the usual convey of the campaigners, a reminder of the
demise of Prof Festus Iyayi in the recent struggle of the Academic Staff Union
of Universities (ASUU) who died as a result of the head on collusion with the
convoy of the Kogi State Governor, Idris Wada.
The journey to Gombe had other road
facilities, animals, the availability of fireflies as the journey continued,
the checkpoints as speed-breaker and likewise a source of interrupting the
sleep of the poet-persona. The road eventually ends for the poet to disembark
and gently go to bed since it is a very long journey from the base of the poet.
The Ukrainian Day, page 32, is a train
poem that shows movement in the same direction. The first 14 lines was upturn
with little changes. It is a fascinating piece that shows the depth and
skillfulness of the use of words by the poet persona. The first line of the
poem goes thus:
The
morning moon
While
the 28th line of the poem reads:
Oh,
the morning moon of my passion.
The
last six lines of the poem implied that the flora and fauna of the town has
“unforgettable beauty”(line 34).
Soft
bite, page 37, is a poem that reflects the state of electricity in our nation
and the “bite” associated with a damage Personal Computer that has taken a new
name, Personal Companion. The first four lines capture the flow from the memory
of the poet to the binary punch that captures his thoughts. The monitor of the
system typifies the “monitors of life”, “the silent hum of the hard disks” and
ultimately the interwoven life of man with these “tiny things” referring to the
smart phones and other gadgets that gets us to “open books and faceless
groups”. Men is now perceived as “children of virtual hi-ways”. The origin of
the “soft bite” was the destroying voltage of electricity.
The
peculiar information technology words in the poem are bytes (line 3), binary
(line 4), monitor (line 5), hard disks (line 7), virtual (line13), virus (line
14), batteries (line 15), saved (line 16), delete (line 17).
All
of me is people, page 38, is a reminder of the Yoruba saying that “eniyan laso mi”. The poem is an
appreciation of those who wishes the poet well on his birthday. The people
included members of the internet community and the University community. The
poem evokes emotion discussing the enormity of the love shown to him, the depth
of his feelings which transverse through the “nerve, bone and blood” (line 7).
However, the birthday is a reminder that age is advancing anf it is a call to
do more. The poet sums it up that regardless of the loneliness and need for
more care, he knows that: all of me is people” (line 15).
EBBS
The
second part of the anthology is titled, Ebbs. Ebbs is about the depression
thoughts of the poet about happenings in the society most especially when the
poet is not around. In the poem titled, “News from home”, it is a poem on
elections in Nigeria. Summing up the totality of what is happening in the nation;
the poems used the word, “some” to categorized the various groups namely the
voters, the thugs, the propagandists, injured, the murdered and some deflected
to other parties. Others were those who caused post-election violence, rigged
the election, protested, cursed, cried because they lost, some prayed and
politicians on exile expressed dissatisfaction from other countries. The poem
concludes that all these had led to the “death of Silence, forever” in our
country.
Our
fragments, page 45, is a poem that has 6 lines with the phrases written
together defiling the rule of orthography. The poem looks at the various angles
to which arguments are drawn and concluding that it is all from the same
source.
Three
Desperations, page 48, is a poem that discusses three categories of people. The
first group refers to those who are hunted but mute on their way to damnation.
The second group refers to those who fled into other nations as far as
Australia which is one of the utmost part of the world from Nigeria and the
third group refers to those who feed fat on the national treasury. In Nigeria
today, these are the three groups: the populace who have no voice and are being
led by the political class dogmatically, the pressure groups and the opposition
had left the country while the political class keeps enjoying their dividends
of corruption.
At
last poetry is on the streets is a short poem written on 4 pages with seven
parts of four lines in the first six parts while the last part is just a line.
The first part is a discussion on the prevailing darkness but the poet will
keep muttering the sound regardless of the obvious truth. The second part is
about the prevalence of pretenders; however the poet would not give in to jests
or become a coward till they are confronted with the truth. The third part
shows how the powerless had revealed our deeds, evil and shame to the world.
The fourth part compares the political situation to the following murder of
every opposition, provision for arms like the military and there is still
abundance of bloodshed. The animals used to depict bloodshed are the Cheetah
and the Hyena. The fifth part is a prayer to those inflicting pain on the
citizenry that any other bloodshed on the streets shall be that of their
children.
The sixth part is the hope that one day with the prevalence of truth,
words that will pull the trigger and the seventh part ends with the line:
at last poetry
is on the streets…
Poetry
on the streets denotes that creativity is going to fight the battle for the
electorate in a state where selfishness, ethnicity, lack of accountability
reigns. This piece is one of the reinforcing displays of the uncompromising
tweak of the society by the 3rd generation poets like Remi Raji
singing change to the hearing of the recalcitrant leaders.
FLOWS
The
third part of the anthology is tagged Flows. This part has 16 poems. The poem
that made the title of the collection is in this segment. The poem is dedicated
to mother. The poem has end rhyme. The word, “Naked” is mentioned seven times
in the poem. The poem contains a lot of pathos as the poet see the passing on
of his dear mother:
You whispered me
to life and now I hear your last breath
The
mother is eulogized for her beauty,
Fairer than the oils of gods, you are the last
incense,
I am lost to the dream, to time and moral sense.
The
sea of the poet’s mind is ever full of the memory of his mother. He alluded her
remembrance to drinking water.
Naked, every
day I drink water, I remember you.
Sky
scenes, page 68, is a reminder of the beautiful display evident in the sky from
time to time. The colourfulness of nature is portrayed thus:
Bright now, then
blue, dark and a light redness
a geography of
sensations.
Thunders
and other lightning elements is the all contained in the cloud, rain and
drought all reside with the actions of the sky and the potential of raining
without stopping till it leads to a typhoon resides still in the same sky. The
poet ends it by his positive determinism of weathering storms.
This
poem is romantic in nature as such the poems in this part of the anthology are dedicated to someone or
something.
There
is no beautiful poem like you is a poem of anticipation of who a young person
who be in the future based on her present carriage, disposition and exposure.
The bright display of the person the poem is addressing is expressed thus:
You came shining
Like
transparency of the day
The
place of mentorship and guidance is also embedded in the poem:
But I
remembered watching my legs
lead in your
direction
The
anticipation of who the person will become make the poem end in parenthesis.
You’re the poem
not yet written
Waiting to be…
Abebi
is another poem in memory of the poet’s mother. It could be tagged delusion but
it is the reality of what profound memories do to people. As the Muslim do
periodically by praying for their departed ones by praying for them, the poet
does the same:
Tonight all the
saints and spirits bless you, my mother
I see your
victory above vanity
May
the wind follow my plaintiff wish is a poem is a poem about traveling. The poet
enjoys traveling and wishes that every time he travels to have a safe trip. The
restlessness and the desire to accomplish daringly is reflected in the poem.
THE RECESSIONAL
The
recessional is a poem in two languages written and translated by the poet. It
is a play on word by the Yorubas, which is called Iforo dara. The poem is about the enormity of what can be done with
words. Words are so powerful, this is illustrated in the poem with the
following features of words:
“Bend, tear and
break” line 4.
“You break, you
tie, you swell, you burst” line 9
“The word is
sword against power” line 10.
Other
forms of strength displayed by word are boneless but pricking, toothless but
bear the fang, armless but blast the face.
The
recessional is a conclusion of the literary voyage that we have embarked on
from the Introit in this anthology, the word used by the poet has done
exceptionally well in its ability to marry the song and be the midwife of
words.
It is a laudable thing that Sea of my mind was
nominated for the NLNG prize, 2013. The mention
has shown that the quality of work churned out from the stable of Professor
Aderemi Raji-Oyelade is an addition to the body of literature.