The Arts-Muse Fair

Review by Eugene Yakubu Behind this unpromising title are promising verses that will hold a reader spellbound with the wittiness, precision of imagination and prominent conceits. Garko’s poetry invites the reader to go beyond his imagination and expand his worldview with carefully molded verses and turgid images. What makes his poetry amusing is that it possesses a fair amount of literary and linguistic acuity that exudes enormous meaning in little lines— a feature of some of the most sophisticated poets only. It leaves the reader begging for more, cut too quick from this imaginative ecstasy that delivers in its first and short verses then allows the deafening sound of the mental images created to echo in the reader’s head. This is a collection to be read even though the themes end at surreal surfaces, only striking at the emotions, it offers a lot about love and nature, nostalgia and identity, virtues and vices and the illusory feeling of connection with the worl

Questions for the Man on the bridge and the heart is a whore the body, her palace of exploits where men dig into women's skins while shadows wander through the bush paths of their hearts like politicians keeping emergency aces ask the child who died faceless standing on the threshold where death was the best encounter whose mother only dwelled in the cozy shelter of denial that poverty could only kill but not open a grave of sores and frustration that a husband who constantly chooses to return home with sweat and grime and grease of a sun's leftovers smeared all over his ambitions does so with the legions in his body in full jolt without hesitation without any longing for that fresh scent of another locked in his chest is man not the demon or is it the world who navigates his pliant feet One man who belched truth said home is like bowing to God the world hands you no choice nature reeks of repetitions and conformity said the bridge is a palace

        Nigerian poetry has witnessed significant growth and metamorphosis over the years. Poetry without doubt has gained prominence as the preferred genre of literature especially among the younger generation. It is arguably also the most abused genre today. The advent of the new media and the subgenre of spoken word or performance poetry, have further revolutionarized the genre. Poetry has become more flexible and relatable, having lost its hitherto iconoclastic gaity; a consequence of the newer generation’s obsession with pop culture and entertainment.   Poetry is gradually losing its traditional essence as a sagely enterprise and rapidly degenerating into a merchandise. There is however the existence of a group of experimentalists or poetry fundamentalists who, working separately, are making sure that the value of poetry as we have known it to be is sustained. These are neoclassical poets bounded together by their genuine aspirations to keep the honour of poetry intact. Th