The Arts-Muse Fair

Pic: Aminu S Muhammad Come here You child Of Adigun the thieving husband Lekan Get away from the lake Its pebbles' won't save you How dare you steal from Our sacred cooking pot Eating the sacrificial meat Leaving little lying in the near bottom That meat was Meant for the spiritual king Lekan You lied that the pot bellied thief Stole the meat Because the world Has been exposed to his stealing He wears worn out rags You evil child You think because your father is a chief Who steals so high You can't be given the title of a thief Just because you wear an expensive life Come here You child of lost sanity You evil being of corrupt high hierarchy Today I will lash you And your might of wealth Won't catch you away It won't dare come near ***** HANEEFAH ABDULRAHMAN is currently a 300 level student of English and Literary studies at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. She is the 2020 Editor 1 of T

Pic: Aminu S Muhammad ...A Dance at Naira-Night... All I see are the miscalculated feet In processional mourning of the eerie beats from a native drum The hands of the elders are masterpieces Full of the rhythmic sounds that play at the tomb Of the village youths. II Let it not be put under the tongues of the cowards The elders of our age had traded the cult of decency for a youthful lust. Beyond this gloom of loss, I will announce the reign of reasoning to halt the culture of hypocrisy Beyond this tirade of anguish, I will declare the revolution of thought Towards a regeneration of clannish love Beyond this era of dirge, May these gods miss their path to alter the fate of our promising 'morrow. A Watch Upon the Night's Stars And when the virtuous grin transmuted to a sham is greeted with a loud ecstasy By my puerile clans, I took a chance, towards the dawn of our nights, to stride along the confluence

Pic: Aminu S Muhammad Home Blues  The storms that captured our homeland announced no preface  From every cloud Only torn narratives we gain   Now There are no gravities for postscripts Stranger  Stranger, The Past should not be a portal  She is a pariah Take my sins to the cemetery There they should abide  Pose them to the world  And unleash every Blue That lived That is living  That will be living  State of the Heart I am a cloud  Death is my fruit  The grin I grin hides the earth of the grief And only in the heart you can see the grief  You can't voyeur at the heart Don't zoom my earth to your heart  I know my earth is walking through shards I know there are dungeon hiding the heights of its gaits It is the nakedness of time at the earth square  Time lives no storm alive They say the night loves my tears They say tomorrow is in throes They say the faith in the fate has dimmed They say the

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

Pic: Aminu S Muhammad Japanese language petals hover river flows and drains On the tea cup nankeen trickles cicada sings monk’s semblance rustle of trees Letter for a Kurd Roj Light cloaks the flowers in the wind, even in the silence, tell to souls it message lethargy doesn’t tell to your dragged and tomb soul on the cross of your sword ear the valley of the dead from far away in the garden, a drop after rain in the sun of your glance şev Esman, stêr, mang. Taught me: sky, star and moon the poetry shows us our illiteracy, said while seeing the stars who don’t know to read the night, couldn’t read himself sounds in the head fade away on an infinite remembrance each time clangs on an insistence to breath             sleepless do it:                                                 vibration in the window                                                 bird’s absence                                      looking for a set point

Are you a student of any of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions (Universities, Colleges of Educations and Polytechnics)? Are you a Nigerian student currently studying in other parts of the world? Do you have a previously unproduced/unpublished ONE-ACT play that addresses issues of corruption and its human costs, lack of accountability and good governance, or a call to action to engender change and ethical revolution? Arojah Royal Theatre and the International Centre for Creative and Performing Arts with the support of MacArthur Foundation and the Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) is pleased to announce the maiden edition of The Arojah Students' Playwriting Prize (TASPP). Interested students are hereby invited to submit entries for a chance to win N100,000 plus an opportunity to be published in an anthology of new plays.  Please study the guidelines and agreement before submitting your play in the link below: https://forms.gle/DqxtAJVkp8j6

  BY PAUL LIAM     Teresa Oyibo Ameh also known as Aunty Talatu is fondly referred to by many as the Mother-Teresa of Nigeria, because of her charity work and girl-child empowerment programmes. A reputable writer of children’s works and author of eight (8) books, she is the author of The Torn Petal , and Founder of the Aunty Talatu Reads Foundation, which encourages reading culture in children and young adults. The Kogi State born philanthropist is also a successful Civil Servant and Board Member of FCT Basketball Association. In this interview with Paul Liam, she sheds more light on the inspiration behind her foundation and charity support for the less privilege members of the society. This interview was conducted via email.     I think my early challenges prepared me for what I do now. I can empathize because I have been there. I can relate because I know that pain   Please, could you give us a brief background to what informed the Aunty Talatu Reads Foundation?