HOMING BIRD

It is refreshingly exciting to encounter the world and reality of this poet in the way they have been portrayed. We meet familiar words time after time: ‘river’, ‘body’, ‘skin’, ‘mother’, ‘water’, common yet powerful. These words form the foundation upon which the poet builds their reality. Memory and identity spill out in form of wordplay, sometimes as a way of reclaiming the past, sometimes as invocation, or a hidden wellspring suddenly discovered, with great relief, in the time of famine. For instance, in the opening poem, the poet admits:

“Perhaps, this city— like a giant churning machinery
— will one day vomit my bones.”

City is metaphorical, and so are bones and machinery. The poet scores a delicate point by making certain admissions. By his revelations. This becomes self evident when he confesses: ‘my body is a river and a river is my body.’ The poet hasn’t come to play.
They show us. They tell us, as well:

“I cradle sin in my bossom, let it perfuse my skin until I wear
It properly like a cultural regalia refrain: if you are what, won’t you want to be defined properly? I am on a journey into the crevices on my black skin, a petal unfolding in darkness”

The poems in this collection are nuanced and deeply evocative. They draw from the past and usher the sensitive reader into a distant sunlight, the poet’s body unbridles like water, seeking the language of light. The poet is full of questions: the world is falling? can’t you see? Can’t you see? They question the atrocities going on in parts of the world, places like Tripoli, Chibok, Gaza, while:

“The world pulsates with fascination, appreciates with minds that sieve beauty from broken things, agrees, applaud &

make you rich.”

This voice sings an endless ode to departure; a respite to the torture of living, for leaving is liberating. Here is an emergent voice that desperately needs to be heard.

– Chisom Okafor

Good poetry, rich language, allegories, and diction. the poet leaves us finding the lamp in our heads.
– Francis Annagu