New poetry begins at the steering of tradition. This is why over time—especially in America and Europe—periods are markers for the style, philosophy, and structure of poetry. These different epochs also celebrate or criticize the cultural traits of the times. Romanticism was a deviation from the highhanded approach of the neoclassical era. The modern era, which has offered us the channel for continuous cultural evaluation through its “posts,” as Bernard Bergonzi puts it, “is marked by aesthetic concentration, imaginative intensity and boldness, a stress on individual sensibility, a corresponding indifference to purely social vices, and a certain contempt for the recent past…” Now that we are in the age of postmodernism, a heightened modern era that breaks away from the near ‘traditional’ desire of the 20th century, poetry has taken a steer towards a new expression.
While most of the new generation of global readers might be more familiar with Rupi Kaur before her, there was Rod McKuen. McKuen first offered me the possibility of simple poetry. His book, Alone is the kind of collection you read, and it feels like listening to Passenger or classical country music, taking you through a journey of self-interrogation through fragmented lyrics with pauses that allow you to introspect. Then came Kaur, and then came Amaka Felly Obioji in her debut, Mother Did You Call My Name.
Mother Did You Call My Name, a 2024 work by Sevhage Publishers; a one hundred and nineteen pages collection with prepossessing illustrations by Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi, is parted into four sections: Uproots (I – XLI), Goddess (XLI – LIX), Homecoming (LX – LXXXVI), and Mother, Did You Call my Name? (LXXXVII-CIX). From the first poem, “I”—the poems are titled by numbers—we voyage into, first, the definitions of what sadness is, and later warned not to water it nor create an enabling soil for it to grow inside our body. The poem opens:
Sadness is a repulsive feeling, nestling pretty on your bed.
It’s in your tired bones, each morning you wake up,
thinking you didn’t get enough sleep.
It follows you around, in its muffled steps,
hiding beneath your large grins and smiles.
Tip-toeing around your happiness. Burying itself
deep.
Do not water it! (8).
Obioji takes us on a simple, but not so simple walk through sadness. It is a repulsive feeling, yet it nests pretty on the bed, and there is a large grin and smile, which does not eradicate the presence of the sadness. Perhaps the uncertainty of this feeling hurts more, and the process of burying itself. The first session of the book is a testament to the subject of pain, which comes differently from collective weltschmerz. The second and third poems dive into the inability of one broken by exhaustion to even savor the feelings of happiness, and this exhaustion comes “…mornings/ you wake up heavy with brokenness from a thousand/nights before” (10).
In the book’s second section, “Goddess” Obioji takes us away from the temporality of individual pain to the politics of gender. This is the predominant topic of the collection, a walk in a gallery with the voices of and for women. The opening poem of this section begins with a ferocious reconstruction of God’s image. Although, in just two lines, the poem creates a poetic ambiguity of what the poet persona’s claim is, if god is a woman, or if her mother is her god—the latter being a celebration of womanhood and motherhood. The poem simply reads: “My god is a woman,/ in the replica of my mother” (49). She continues with this celebration in XLII:
The god of small things,
the god of imperfect things,
The giver of all things asked
and miracles unasked.
A mother, for her, is “The god that never fails” (50). The signs that a mother is a god abound in most of the poems in this section. Although one wonders why the section is “goddess” and not “god” considering there is a level of audacity in the metaphorical creation of a mother being a god. Obioji brings childbirth and creation under a singular rubric. In XLIV, she writes:
Take a look at god’s creation.
Human, moulded in its image and likeness. A dream
come true. Painted in love and colors. Adorned with life.
Look at what god did here, she gave life to life (52).
The section holds the grace of motherhood through her friendship, and kindness, and the poet’s life is “the continuation of the dreams of my foremothers, an entire lineage of/ women who have passed soft words, through/ time, to my soul in their native tongue, a /symphony of hope” (56). The presence of women in this section which extends to the other parts shows the poet’s communion with the issues of gender.
The politics of gender—and this time, the men are in the picture, and they are here in polarity with women—is shown through the poet’s rebellion against patriarchy and misogyny. In “LVI” she states that:
Misogyny lies in every
corner of the room,
the air chokes me.
I
picked a broom
swept everything away.
Now,
it lies in the trash,
where it truly belongs. (64)
Another poem that speaks to the same issue is “LXXI,” which also has a first line that is standalone and could easily function as the title, “A woman unbecoming.” The poem is a witness to the persona’s act of washing off the smell of patriarchy and how it dictates women’s choices. With the change to be free from the rein of patriarchy, the persona becomes a new being who states that: “I am a woman unbecoming of everything/ society has forced me to accept about myself” (80).
“XLVI” illustrated with a woman with wings and arms stretched upward to signal freedom also speaks on the theme of feminism. The persona here speaks as a new generation who looks at the life of her mother’s generation and their suffering in the village of patriarchy.
Our mothers walked on fire, they drank from
the very cup of patriarchy, to fend for entitled men,
who claimed women's bodies. Bound them with chains, saying:
“Quiet, you are but a woman” (54)
After the epoch of mothers who make everything happen, only for irresponsible fathers—entitled men—to always hush them because they are women. But the new age comes with daughters who won’t “take a sip from that cup.” Because: We are daring women./ Ready, free, about to fly” (54). While this radical spirit must be praised, there is a bit of extremity reminiscent of the Western mode of gender discourse and pedagogy which presents feminism as gender war in the tone of these later poems.
“XLVIII” takes a better approach to celebrating womanism. Celebrating that there is no named conflict. It is rather women being the amazing beings they are:
When the journey is over,
may I remember it was the kind words of women that got me here.
The persona reels in memories of conversations with her ancestors in her native tongue, which come to her as a symphony of hope. She carries the dreams of her foremothers, and importantly, these dreams are decked in the language of love to remind her of her origin. The persona here could be boys as well because the love of a mother works magic for all.
Mother, Did You Call My Name is a debut that—as we say it here—rocks. Both in style and theme, Obioji sets out to offer something new: fragile simplicity and fluidity and reaches for emotions directly. The collection travels through despair, pain, and aches that come from the undefined terrain of the human soul. That kind of sadness keeps biting the heart, yet you cannot point to where it comes from. Then we pass through the street of patriarchy and its ruin on the mind and body of women, but Obioji tells us a new generation, her generation, has emerged to break out from the walls and hold onto chauvinistic dominance. It’s a collection of survival and, importantly, hope.
Owen Odeson is a critic who writes on a broad range of issues despite a keen interest in the history of art and society. He can be reached at owenodeson23@gmail.com