LET'S TAKE A WALK MAMA

LET’S TAKE A WALK MAMA

By Tiisetso M Thiba

Let’s take a walk mama

To heights of eighties when I was new

To this earth of misery

Let’s walk and talk

About life

When your heart was not pleased

By the erstwhile situation

And you were still

Young and beautiful

Like a young cute rose

With colour so bright

And many souls want to sniff

Its fresh and pleasant aroma

Let’s continue to shuffle air mama

And talk about papa

When he was young too

And had a big ideal

Which his age lad didn’t have

You both walked down the aisle

Before tea bags under your eyes

And continue to show

You that he is a real man

A real deal

A unique and dignified man

He provided enough for us to survive

He pulled all strings down

To tell us what life entails

Because we were still blind

With no need for sticks to walk

Our eyes were wide open though

He is a light that needs no boost to shine

Don’t leave me behind mama

I want to walk step by step with you

When Pabi breathe the air for the first time

Tiny and so cute

Whooping like a baby in pain

At night, you were strong indeed

To witness what owls talk about

At night when she weeps for nothing

After twenty four months

Papas landed too, to increase our number

What a meek soul he is

Polite and with a voice box like mine

I reminisce his deeds mama

When his mind was full of aquatic

He was so short tempered like a lion

Hold my hand tight mama

Therefore I can feel your heartbeat in my palm

Do you remember when Nthabi

Arrived to conclude your

Wished kids’ chapter?

She has stolen Papa’s looks

She is so bright upstairs like a full moon

She is also used to cries too much

At night like Pabie did

A beautiful and much revering girl

We were all heavy on your back

Feeding us from your breast

To grow and be strong and firm

Like you and Papa

Let’s walk slowly mama

My chest is burning

And I’m smelling blood thru my nostrils

I know you have been thru

Hills and downs in life

You have been drowning in milady of life

Because you are strong as steel that refuse to bend

You have made it thru all odds

Mama I was there and my eyes

Perceived every scene occurring

Even today you are still strong and firm like a fiddle

They say God works in a mysterious ways

Indeed he does

Phoney souls portrayed saint spirit

But they are only people living in a glass houses

Let’s pull our feet to rest Mama

Life is too short but we will be here for a while

* Mr Thiba is a South African poet, short story writer, and literary activist

Introducing AYI KWEI ARMAH

Overview by Paul Lothane

"Each thing that goes away returns and nothing in the end is lost. The great friend throws all things apart and brings all things together again. That is the way everything goes and turns around. That is how all living things come back after long absences, and in the whole great world all things are living things. He will return".

- from FRAGMENTS

The beautyful ones are not yet born. "The man's lack of a name irritates Achebe...Reminding him of the best manner of existentialist writing".           

Why are we so blest? "Armah's account (of Prof Jefferson's impotence) lacks the faintest tincture of that compassion which usually accompanies recognition of
tragic facts".  

  

"Solo in Why are we so blest? and Baako in Fragments are both heirs to the 19th century Romantic tradition of artistic isolation...    

"In Two Thousand Seasons, Armah resolves this by envisaging social contact of the artist in traditional African community 'hearers, seers, imaginers, thinkers  like griots, ijala singer, Ewe lyricist etc'".  

Two Thousand Seasons. "Such willful blinkering strikes one as unacceptable" "The humane sensibility tends to recoil..." - W Soyinka.

Ayi Kwei Armah's Works

The beautyful ones are not yet born

Fragments  

Why are we so blest?

Two thousand Seasons

The Healers

Osiris Rising

KMT: In the house of life

The Eloquence of the Scribes

Hieroglyphics for Babies

A TA SANTE, WOLE SOYINKA!

Nobel Laureate notches 80

By O Bolaji

Wole Soyinka at 80.  It exhilarates the soul just thinking about the nonpareil writer and activist, Wole Soyinka, clocking 80 at the weekend. What a remarkable man!  

Happily enough the great man himself has essentially chronicled his own extraordinary life over the decades in a series of celebrated published literary autobiographies: in works like Ake, the years of childhood, Ibadan: the penkelemes years, The Man Died, Isara: a voyage around essay, You must set forth at dawn etc. The world knows Soyinka, Nigeria's first and only (literary) Nobel laureate is an incredibly versatile writer.

Our own W.S (William Shakespeare/Wole Soyinka) has straddled virtually every aspect of creative writing; first and foremost as a dramatist and playwright churning out dozens of polished plays. But he is also a novelist, poet, literary critic, essayist, translator, film-maker, among many other things.  

Soyinka has also always been a political activist and humanist "for me justice is the first condition of humanity" "the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny". He has been the scourge of successive regimes who have held Nigeria to ransom. Soyinka even spent years in gaol to reinforce his commitment to pristine humanity.

In respect of literature, Soyinka is easily one of the greatest writers the world has ever seen. He is a one man literature industry. He has published dozens of world class works, and dozens of literary works have been published on him and his work. Some of the best literary critics in the world - including USA's acclaimed Harold Bloom - have zeroed in on his fecund works.

Countless critics would of course continue to comment on the brilliance and "difficulty" of his published works. A friend of mine, who studied English at one of Nigeria's premier universities told me: "To call Wole Soyinka a genius is to indulge in ludicrous understatement. For decades I read his novel, Season of anomy and still hardly understand it. Every page is a masterpiece of sorts, the evocative descriptions, diction, allusions et al. You read and re-read the pages and accept in your relative ignorance that you are confronted with an eclectic skilled, literary master..."

Indeed, Soyinka's creative works resonate on the reader for years on end (for ever?) He adumbrates his ideas in unforgettable fashion even in microcosmic passages. Consider this for example (from Season of anomy) - relating to the catalytic role of women in revolutions:      

"We must acknowledge the fact - pimps, whores - are the familiar vanguard of the army of change. When the moment arrives a woman like Iriyise becomes for the people a Chantal, a Deborah, touch and standard-bearer, super mistress of universal insurgence. To abandon such a potential weapon in any struggle is to admit to a lack of foresight. Or imagination"

For me I have always felt that the humour and irony integral in Soyinka's work is perhaps not appreciated enough. Examples in this wise are legion; "When you try to sneer, Lasunwon you look singularly ugly" (The Interpreters) "I know the brother (a religious prophet) and this admission is enough for anyone with a sense of shame" (Jero's Metamorphosis).

Or from many passages in You must set forth at dawn; where the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, the late Arisekola Alao etc are described in candid, yet humorous manner. From the sublime to the ridiculous also in the same work, with the "transfiguration" of a bottle of beer as Soyinka flees the borders!

As befits such an outstanding, world-class writer, Soyinka has his critics, and those who laud him to the highest heavens! Unashamedly I admit I belong to the latter category; yet I feel his "critics" have every right to ventilate their reservations also. As a lofty literary critic himself, Soyinka knows ‘literary criticism’ is part of the game, to put it crudely and in elementary fashion.      

Indeed as we all wish Soyinka a wonderful 80th birthday I again recollect a colleague of mine abroad who swore at some of Soyinka's critics and said to me: "How can anybody have the temerity to criticise such a great great man, a man whose literary achievements are such that other peers can only dream of emulating the same; a man who is arguably the greatest-ever living Nigerian?" Happy Birthday, Sir!!!

Selected bibliography

The Swamp Dwellers (1958)

The Lion and the Jewel (1959)

The Trials of Brother Jero

A Dance of the Forests (1960)

The Strong Breed (1964)

Kongi's Harvest (1964)

The Road (1965)

Madmen and Specialists (1970)

The Bacchae of Euripides (1973)

Death and the King's Horseman (1975)

Opera Wonyosi (1977)

Requiem for a Futurologist (1983)

A Play of Giants (1984)

The Beatification of Area Boy (1996)

King Baabu (2001)

The Interpreters (novel)

Season of Anomy (1972)

The Man Died: Prison Notes (1971)

Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)

Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years: a memoir 1946-65 (1989)

Isara: A Voyage around Essay (1990)

You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006)

Idanre and other poems (1967)

A Shuttle in the Crypt (1971)

Myth, Literature and the African World (1976)

Mandela's Earth and other poems (1988)

Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture (1988)

The Credo of Being and Nothingness (1991)

The Burden of Memory – The Muse of Forgiveness (1999)

TABAN LO LIYONG.

    

           

 "A story does not have to have many characters in it...As we feel that what (the protagonist) ate for breakfast that morning has no relevance whatsoever on the visit, nor the colour of the sky while he passed through the countryside, nor how sharp his nose is. Nor how blue his eyes - since we feel that these extraneous things other writers use for fleshing up scanty stories are not constitutional ingredients of the story, we shall cut them out - for the readers' benefit. We understand our readers are busy people, rushing from one phase of life to another"

- Taban lo Liyong in 'He and Him'