Day 7: Scent of Rust

Surreal Photography by Caracas Ionut

The scent of ripeness

Is the scent of rust;

A complete life clefts

In a mote of dust.

That’s how we begin,

And how we go on.

When ripeness kicks in

Its cousin rust comes;

The taste of sourness

Hides in the sweetness.

Life is light and dark.

Fate is good and bad.

Opposites collaborate

In a field of grain

Making it all blend.

Ripeness points to the end

And makes way for rust.

And rust confounds us all.

Akpan

Fact Imitating Fiction

There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe 

When the writer, Chinua Achebe wrote his novel, A Man of the People he didn’t exactly know he was wading deep waters at least, not until he found himself in a compromising situation.

            In his latest book, There Was a Country, A Personal History of Biafra which is a memoir of sorts, the late author spins a soul-searching tale of rut within the political class, the lust for power and the tragedy of a people’s indifference to a gradual national autolysis.

Beneath an undertone of grave urgency the voice of a savvy writer goes through the roof on a well-oiled, jet-propelled craft that hypes up the intuitive muse within. It doesn’t just arouse but nurtures his muse into an orderly and consistent relation with his own practical consciousness in a setup where it becomes difficult to indulge the one and skip the other.

Death toll peaked at a couple hundreds per day and most Igbos in Lagos hightailed it when violence against the ethnos came to a head. Achebe (an Igbo man, himse) couldn’t bring himself to accept the detail played out in his eyes; his job, his life as he knew it was done and over with. One day, while snooping around on his office grounds, he bumped into his boss.

“Badejo (Victor Badejo then director general of Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation) confirmed a story I had heard of drunken soldiers who came to my office ‘wanting to find out which was more powerful their guns or my pen.’”

Chinua Achebe,

There Was a Country

If you can remember our previous talk of a book within this bigger book; a novel with the name, A Man of the People, I assume you wouldn’t find it difficult to wrap your fingers around the author’s peculiar dilemma.

“Some may wonder why soldiers would be after me so fervently… it happened that I had just written ‘A Man of the People’ which forecast a military coup that overthrows a corrupt civilian government. Clearly a case of fact imitating fiction and nothing else, but some military leaders believed that I must have had something to do with the coup and wanted to bring me in for questioning.”

Chinua Achebe,

There Was a Country

Achebe had sent a copy of ‘A Man of the People’ to a writer friend of his to read and review before the official publication date came around. Said friend was the famous Nigerian writer, poet and anthologist J.P. Clark. Inside the building where their little writing community rendezvoused, a community with a roll-call which boasted great names like Wole Soyinka, Onuora Nzekwu amongst others, Clark would arrived much later than Achebe uttered words (about the book and its author’s insight) that Achebe didn’t quite get over until his passing on several years later.

“It happened that my new novel, ‘A Man of the People,’ was about to be published in London, and I was communicating with my publisher, Heinemann. I knew the book was going to be problematic for me because of its criticism of Nigerian politics—very severe criticism. The novel after all, climaxes in a military coup.
                “I had sent one copy of the novel to J.P. Clark on a Wednesday, two days. When J.P. arrived at the meeting his voice rang out from several hundred feet away.                ‘Chinua, you know, you are a prophet. Everything in this book has happened except a coup!’

Chinua Achebe,

There Was a Country

Unbeknownst to both writers, they were sitting on the lip of a horrendous drop into the pit of the first military coup in Nigeria—the cold calculation and diabolic art of tactless men which has tainted the course of the nation’s upward mobility almost for all time. The evening of the same day this discussion took place recorded the successful execution of a military coup.

“When the artist’s imagination clashes with life’s very reality it creates a heavy conundrum.”—Achebe.

The job of a writer, contrary to traditional belief is one of the most dangerous though all he (or she) crafts are fictional works.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan

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Color of Water

Celebrating Nigeria's 51st Independence Anniversary

Come on over here,

Let me shake your hand.

Do you have one minute?

Can you sit a spell with me?

I know the heart has journeyed from present;

Troubadours of imagination over-keening

Relics of that undiscovered country

I’ll show you the meaning of Africa

Ease you into my lil’ secret, soul brother;

I know

            the color

                        of water.

A river serenades the streets of the cities;

Two rivers in unbroken swells sync into unity’s axis.

The rains you witness forerun the breakers of prophecy.

Ain’t it all so clear for you to see?

Hey, Beautiful, you must be from my country.

You ain’t flauntin’ marks of a tribe over your identity,

You’re sprung on a dialect of 300; your swagger’s a culture of peace.

Say, you sure, you ain’t from Nigeria?

Come and I’ll fill you in on a wee secret, soul sister;

I fetched

             the color

                         of water.

I never forget a color.

Han, han, not this one.

It’s the instant image that springs up

At the mention of you.

The flush of green sprayed over your landscape

That reaches out thro’ you.

See?

I never forget a color.

I open the door and reality hit me like a hammer.

I saw stars and I saw the color…

                                                of water.

I know the color of water

And it sure as the next sunrise ain’t tribal;

I know

             the color

                         of water

It’s West African sepia.

Author’s Note:

I know the heart has journeyed from present – Wole Soyinka

That Undiscovered Country – William Shakespeare referring to the future.

West African sepia – Wole Soyinka, Telephone Conversation
Soul Brother/sister - A nod to Chinua Achebe's Beware, Soul Brother

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Beyond The Word

"Some of us - poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes - beyond the word."

The life of a poet is one beleaguered by metaphors.

Someone rightly said about Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' that lots of people had seen that same church cemetry, had been there, tasted the atmosphere, drank in the fragrance of the buds before this great poet came to the place with eyes simple enough to see his surroundings but not one of these saw the unwritten verse hanging, dangling like the ancient apple, tempting anybody who would look close enough to turn 'em into everlasting words.

Wole Soyinka as a young man.

As a poet it is not just about seeing the ideas posing in your face. Remember  Wordsworth's famous definition of poetry:

'Emotion recollected in tranquility'

The primary essence of poetry is being able to capture the 'feel' of that moment, the emotion which inspired the verse and to bring that into the words that becomes the 'visible' poem.

If you look closer you'll find that it is not the words that is poetry but the emotion borne in the phrases and breathed into the reader. The words are like symbols, allographs scribbled representative of something deep and more meaningful, almost too sacred to be 'corrupted' by mere alphabets.

Poetry goes beyond the words and even those few times its invention is spontaneous the rush of inspiration takes credit. A good poem, a masterpiece is rarely ever created in one sitting. It undergoes tons and tons of revision and editing. Sometimes, you might have to blog it to know what others think about it before you can add the finishing touches.

Understanding the Professor, Wole Soyinka's words quoted at the beginning of this article you need to know where he has been. His poems echo his life in prison, his days in exile and his years of contending with corrupt military juntas. Poems from Prison (1969) and The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) describe his close to 30 months in a Nigerian prison, and his play, King Baabu is a satire of African dictators.

So the next time you pick up your pen to write poetry remember to paddle a few miles offshore and really live 'beyond the word'.

Akpan

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