The Arts-Muse Fair

Book Title : The Opposite Kingdoms Author : Kwaghsende Jimin Publisher : Kwaghsende Ventures, Minna Pages : 72 Year of publication : 2017 Price : Not stated Reviewer : Paul Liam Kwaghsende Jimin has published notable works including The Pensioner (2006), The Benchmarks (2004), You Can Be Happy (2008) and Life Line (2004). A seasoned administrator with the National Examinations Council (NECO), Jimin’s works are known for their penchant for re-engineering the moral psyche of the people towards the ideals of a utopian society. This ideological dimension to his works is evident in The Pensioner and in his latest offering, The Opposite Kingdoms . Clearly his first published work of prose, Jimin uses a Reconstructionist prism in reassessing the relationship between Africa and the West, and the attendant effects of post-colonialism, through the use of a simple parable. The question of why Africa continues to grapple with underdevelopment in spite of her huge p

Pic: Aminu S Muhammad BY MARYAM S. MOHAMMED  Suddenly, there was an inexplicable loud and ominous crash! It more than startled Iman who had until then been sleeping like most women do in their third trimester.   She had just concluded her nightly ritual of speaking to her husband over the phone and telling him how much she loved him and hated having the master bedroom to herself five nights a week, when she drifted to sleep.   The crash sounded so much like a gunshot, but who had a gun on the premises? Or was it the transformer that had exploded again? Anytime the transformer exploded like that, NEPA officials would give the same lame excuse to the individuals affected- “overload”. Iman had never heard the blowing of the transformer sound this close. She was so anxious, she found herself sitting upright in the middle of the bed. She didn’t have much time to wonder as within the next few seconds, there was another crash – louder this time around, as the door to her bedroom was h

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