Day poets gathered in Iruekpen to celebrate motherhood

On Friday, Iruekpen-Ekuma, a small sleepy town in Esan West Local Government Area of Edo Sate, famous for its clay deposits, was roused by the sound of poetic voices caressing the night. That was shortly after the remains of the mother of celebrated writer, poet and essayist – who was also a former private secretary of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo – Odia Ofeimun, had been laid to rest.

Although the burial of the deceased, Ma Elizabeth Ofeimun, had taken place about an hour earlier, the poets – comprising Prof. Onookome Okome of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada; Prof. Kole Omotoso, Dr. Ogaga Ifowodo, Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam, Dr. Obari Gomba and Iquo Eke, both of who were finalists in the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature competition, to mention only a few – had deemed it necessary to seal her final rite of passage with a second session of poetry reading and performance.

The first event, tagged Festival of poetry, as well as a dance drama written and created by Ofeimun and titled Because of 1914, did take place the previous day. But, an unexpected delay in the journey from Lagos to Edo State , caused by a gridlock between Sagamu and Ore, which lasted about eight hours, had denied our correspondent and a few other guests the opportunity to attend the event.

However, that Friday night, the reading and performance seemed to make up for the fun and excitement that some of the guests missed during the first event. The second reading and poetry performance held in one of the sitting rooms on the ground floor of Onomonresoa House, named after the deceased and intended to serve as venue for the annual Odia Ofeimun Day and Dance Drama outings in the nearest future.

Most of the poems were, quite interestingly, taken from a 293-page anthology of poetry on mothers and motherhood edited by Obari Gomba and published very recently by the Hornbill House of the Arts, with contributions by 94 Nigerian poets across the country. With what appears to be a strict adherence to the theme of motherhood, which the editor describes in his note as the “common denominator” that guided the choice of content for the book, the list of contributors cut across all the textual generations of Nigerian literature. There were poems by the likes of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Ben Okri, Sesan Ajayi and Tolu Ogunlesi, to mention but a few poets.

Explaining why the theme of motherhood was considered as the only measure of relevance in the book, Gomba wrote in his note, “Motherhood is a special subject. Poets across all cultures and epochs are fascinated by mothers and mother-figures. The responses have not always been encomiastic. Poets are not programmed to be hagiographers. So you can expect to meet a welter of voices.”

A dramatic twist to the reading occurred when one of the poets and former Chairman of the Lagos chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Dagga Tollar, reminded the gathering at Onomonresoa House about the prevailing social, economic and political circumstances in which Ma Ofeimun died and he went on to read from a poem titled ‘This country is not a poem’.

Also, a brilliant performance of Say my name by NLNG poetry prize nominees, Iquo Eke and Obari Gomba, added colour, humour and perhaps, glamour, to the event. But the icing on the cake came with the unexpected arrival of the fast-rising all-female dance band known as the Topsticks. The group, which seemed to have improved significantly in the last few months, thrilled the guests to medley of ‘old school’ highlife tunes and songs that were the rave of the dance floors between the 1960s and 1970s.