Book Title: Geography of Living
Publisher: Libretto Publishers
Genre: Poetry
Year: 2020
Pages: 34
Reviewer: Adesina Ajala
You know the wish of every writer, every poet. The wish first puffs like a tiny lump of a dough and begins to grow; begins to eat the body of the dough. The wish to bring your first offering, acceptable and pleasing, before the altar of literary enthusiasts like Abel’s. Now, you feel the author’s boundless joy. You scroll to the first poem and become get lured by its grandeur. ‘Aubade for Living,’ welcomes you into this Pilgrim’s logbook with a prayer twirling from the author’s lips as you feel your palm claps within his. The prayer is soft, but sure:
God:
may the journeying crane locates its nest.
And you hear your heart thuds, Amen.
The next poem, “The Voyage to Uncertainty,” reminds one of the uncertainties in experiments and there’s also the experiment with form in the poem too. Now, the poet places in our jittery, yearning palms the paddle. You know like he knows that this voyage is replete with loads of uncertainties. You listen to him say:
Use the compass
of the known
To locate the shore
of the unknown
The third poem comes to you as “Poetry Beckons to me.” You feel the earth beckons to you; excitement in the way it flaps its hands. You read the poem and wonder at what things we’re bound to find if we travel through life with light souls. The generosities of life to us. To own things, you do not set out to get, to meet life unleash on you its magnificence. You let the poet bring you into the charm of his journey into the soul of all arts:
So I’ll stick to my old friend – non-fiction
And move closer to fiction, my distant friend
Still deeply engrossed in my thought…
Poetry beckons to me.
You’re nabbed now. You just have to continue to read. You can feel the contemplation in “My Brother’s Journey.” Of cutting a niche on the path of rocks, of bearing the ache of a non-conformist in a world meshed and blended together. The counsel of the persona to his erring brother holds you spellbound:
I leave you with my father’s word: son
when the road splits into a million diversion
bend into yourself to know the placement of your foot.
You’re not here by accident. You’re a deliberate art of God. You know this. You’ve known this. Like the title of the poem, you know you’re “An Encoded message” and that you’re sent with a stamp on my (your) foot/ To imprint history on the sand of time.
Life is the matrix given to you to undo this code. To bless humanity and be blessed by humanity. This symbiosis is the base. You pour through Dawn & Dusk and down you go neck-deep to feel the emotion-laced “Ode to My Mug.” You begin to appreciate the poet’s awareness of his surrounding and how even inanimate objects can become so personal and their loss can trigger sincere grief. You hold yourself from sighing as the author laments:
Yesterday, you slipped off my fingers
and watching your brittle body scattered on the kitchen tile
fractured a slice of my heart.
“The Language of my Genes” leads you to “Birnin Kebbi” before you run into the “Crossroads.” And, you’re aware we all come to crossroads in life. Perhaps one, two or more. You must come to junctions where attention gets diced with the knife of desires. The beauty of this poem is both its form and imagery. The poet is here praying his way through his own crossroads:
I buried a prayer in the tide of my breath
to God, or to my shadow
(head-bent, worn-out monochrome portrait drawn on the wall):
I need light
Way
Rest
Survival
bailout.
Your eyes well up as you mull over “Questions.” You took a break to come back to “How I treat my daily fears.” You’re never strange to fears; fears of the unknown, fears of the known. Fear that starves strength and fear that fuels ambition. You say after the poet too:
…every dawn
When daylight unbends me from the spell of sleep
& breath still makes my nostrils warm
I swallow my fear like a good luck charm.
“Close, but Elusive” is an elegy for love (or lust); a threnody for unrewarded affection. You hiss as the poet’s heart breaks into smithereens of poem. Boys like you know that this journey cannot be void of such things: Heartbreaks.
You recline before your phone as you reach “The Making of a Poem.” This is a meta-poem— a poem that talks about the art of poetry. The author talks about the ubiquity of poetry, he says that poetry lurks
in the brightness of sun
in the shadow of darkness
in the womb of solitude …in:
the whisper of silence
the rumbling of sea
the clap of the trees
in the howl of the owls.
Poetry is like MTN; it’s everywhere you go. You know? You imagine the shame of the boys who will not heed the warning in “For Boys on the threshold of Manhood,” memories brew in “Homecoming” and wit looming in “A Father’s Note on Life and Friendship.”
“Of life: night & day” brings you to the last poem, “Beyond the Sea.” This poem wrapped this beautiful anthology up. ‘Beyond the Sea’ is how you move in spite of the ankle cuffs of fear clutching your feet; how you become unruffled by uncertainties; how you hold the bow of the word of God in your hands and pull the arrow of faith to launch yourself into existence and how you ‘gaze beyond the sea/ Beyond what (your) my eyes could see.’
You cleave to your phone to want to read some of the poems again. Your heart wells with gratitude and prayer: Thanks, Opeyemi for giving from your barn the offering of Geography of Living. May you never lack what to give going forward….
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Adesina Ajala is a writer, poet and medical doctor. His works have appeared in Red Letter Journal, The Wild Word, Parousia, Eboquills, Libretto, Praxis, Ngiga Review, Nantygreens, Arts-Muse Fair, Mari and elsewhere. He was the winner Splendours of Dawn Poetry and Short Story Competition (January 2020); Shuzia Creative Writing Contest (4th Edition) and Fodio Data Stipend for Poetry (July & September, 2020). Twitter: @adesina_ajala