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A Non-Romantic Reading of Nasiba Babale's Pickled Moments

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 by Paul Liam Nasiba Babale’s emergence on the poetry literary scene is not by accident, she has in the last decade remained a constant voice strutting the digital space with her whimsical poetry.  Before the publication of her debut collection, she had already established an impressionable reputation as an emerging poet of significant talent. She writes with the consciousness of a bard who is aware of the shuddering threats to humanity's collective future and prosperity. Born and raised in the ancient city of Kano, and trained as a medical lab scientist at the Bayero University, Kano, Babale is a literary administrator and brain behind the first Kano International Poetry Festival in northern Nigeria held in July 2024 at the BUK. The festival reinforced Kano’s leading role as the epicenter of world knowledge production and Hausa civilization.  Recently, in 2024, Konya Shamsurumi published Babale's debut collection of poetry, Pickled Moments to critical acclaim. The collec...

‘The Arc of Sight’: Poetic Voice and Displaced Desire in Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike’s “Guitarist on the Landing” ~ Ismail Bala

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REVIEW BY  ISMAIL BALA Guitarist on the Landing By Uchechukwu Peter Umezirike she strums her Cellotaped guitar, slight woman who sings on the landing at afterwork hours; her jacket bleached, sneakers frayed, hair jumbled, face rucked, eyes a hint of distance, & voice like sand but –   you rarely pause to hear her sing, always in a dash against the push of bodies, until forced this evening to idle on the landing a moment; …train momentarily delayed the loudspeaker voice chafes your ears, sighs of commuters like gnats, odours treacly you nearly spit; should you Facebook or Instagram? her song is what grips – energy of the wind on which a hawk glides, your body unclenches to its currents, prodigious in their sweep; outspread as the hawk, you climb past the arc of sight,   above what she sings about: a father whose mind is a raft on the sea mother who sees shrapnel in her sleep      daughter who se...

Poetic Ambiguity in Ola Ifatimehim’s “Decomposed Rhapsody” ~ Ismail Bala

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BY  ISMAIL BALA Decomposed Rhapsody  by Ola Ifatimehin I have another favourite song I'll love to share with you. You and I lost Our rhythm In the cacophony of sounds That is neither music nor silence. I have a favourite song That makes No sense Because you're not here To share. A song that reminds me Of your soothing smile, Sinful beauty, Forbidden charm. I have a favourite song that scares me of you. Oh yes! Oh no!! I have a favourite song I'd love to share with you For it has moved from my heart to my lips. A symphony of pains and loneliness. Of muted desires. It was the preeminent English critic , William Empson who introduced “Ambiguity” into the critical currency with the publication of Seven Types of Ambiguity in 1930. As confusing as Empson’s delineation of ambiguity is — he confuses ambiguity with all types of multiple meaning in poetry — he has invariably transformed critical a...

Poetry Analysis ~ ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’ of Williams Carlos Williams ~ Aliyu Danladi

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Pic: Aminu S Muhammad The Red Wheelbarrow So much depends upon A red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. The Red Wheelbarrow is a beautiful and simple poem which, at a superficial level, depicts "a red wheel barrow/glazed with rain water" beside some white chickens. And yet the simplicity of the poem is misleading. As the first line says, there is "so much" in it. Structurally, the poem is divided into four stanzas with two lines each. There is a consistent alternation of three words and then one word in every stanza. In terms of meter, there is no consistency; music is however achieved through the soft vowel sounds in many of the words. The words in every stanza are arranged and line break employed in such a way to give emphasis on some certain words. The words "wheelbarrow," "rainwater," and "chickens" receive stronger emphasis by being modified with visually-ap...

Poem review ~ A Reading of Mujahyd Ameen Lilo’s BORNO ~ Atoyebi Oluwafemi Akin

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Pic: Aminu S Muhammad The essentiality of any literary piece is in its accessibility to readers, for the writer anticipates that there are readers for his work. However, poetry is often considered to be one genre of literature enjoyed by a cerebral few, who often than not are armed with the mechanical requisite for its appreciation. This supposition is drawn upon the assertion that poetry is esoteric in nature and as such can only be enjoyed by a limited group of readers who are sometimes fellow poets. Although, there are others who believe that since poetry reflects and represents emotion and reality of human societies, it is only rational that those who constitute the influences of such representation should be able to partake in the appreciation of the poeticization of their lives rendered in poems. It is lieu of this assertion that Niyi Osundare in his meta-poem “Poetry Is” avers that a poem should be accessible to the layman on the street, the laborer, market woman and farme...

Book review | Rhymes from Africa: Re-orienting The African Child

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Book Title: Rhymes From Africa Author: Ibraheem Dooba Publisher: AMAB Books, Minna Pages: 39 Year: 2017 Reviewer: Paul Liam T he role of literature in the entrenchment of colonial ideals in the minds of Africans remains a subject of critical discourse among intellectuals and scholars in understudying the impact of colonialism on the psyche of colonised people of the world. It has been established that European colonializers used their literatures in perpetuating cultural imperialism that unfortunately continues till today. Africans, nay Nigerians are more inclined to the foreign than the local, a precarious adventure which has led the scholar-critic Professor Sule Emmanuel Egya (E. E Sule) to tag the emergent generation of Nigerian writers as the "exogenous generation." Through encounters with western literatures, Africans gained insights into the cultural, religious and value systems of the whites. European epistemology subsequently became the prime...