Once Upon Four Robbers

from Sentinel Poetry (Online) #46


Brief like a Poet


Amatoritsero Ede: It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to engage you on certain issues readers must have been curious about for years. You are known mostly as a playwright. But it is an open secret that you are a consummate poet as well. Does the one calling interfere with or overshadow the other?

Femi Osofisan: Not at all, I hope. Rather like having different limbs.

A.E.: Minted Coins, your first poetry collection, came out about a decade ago. It is an important collection, indeed, in terms of its deployment of language. I think it did win the ANA poetry prize In Nigeria in its year of publication. Do you have another collection out at the moment?

F.O.: I am glad you liked Minted Coins. Since then I've published other collections (Dreamseeker on a Divining Chain, Ire Ni, Pain Remembers, Love Rekindles!)

A.E.: Do you not think that perhaps you deny your readers more of your poetry?

FO: I hope I don’t do that. You must remember that I write poetry rather rarely. I tend to think more spontaneously in dramatic images and scenarios.

A.E.: There has been some criticism – I think by Niyi Osundare as well – bemoaning the absence of rigorous craft in the work of younger crop of Nigerian poets. Do you agree with this assessment?

F.O.: You can't really generalize. Yes, some are shoddy, mediocre, and yes, some are quite talented. The majority certainly seem to be in a hurry to be noticed, before they have developed their craft. They are aggressive, noisy, belligerent. Their voices tend to swamp the field and drown out the exciting ones. One of these days I will do a critical assessment, to point out where we should be looking. But I've been saying this for years now. Time is the real enemy!

A.E.: What about some poets in the third Generation who are doing, as far as I know, powerful work; or are the general critical accusations pervasive?

F.O.: It's just as I said above. One must sit down and separate the grain from the chaff.

A.E.: Does being a notable playwright affect the way you relate to the genre of poetry?

F.O.: I don't know. But again, I hope not. I find I am saying in poetry something different, or at least a different level of perception, from what I am saying in the plays. So I hope the two complement one another for whoever is listening...

A.E.: You were once the President of the Association of Nigerian Authors. I think during your tenure the All Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature was still being awarded. What has happened to that Prize?

F.O.: Well, the person to ask is Prof., Wole Soyinka, the person who endowed the Prize.

A.E.: As an important player in the literary field in Nigeria, what is your position on the controversy dogging the NLNG prize’s limitation vis-à-vis the ‘onshore’ and ‘offshore’ Nigerian writers respectively. Do you agree with Odia Ofeimun’s position?

F.O.: You know I was on the Board which decided the policy, and so I am equally responsible for it. The reasons we have presented elsewhere, and I am prepared to defend them any time. However, the interesting thing is that, after all the controversy started by Odia, some of us were sacked rather unceremoniously from the Board, and a new Board set up. And what was interesting is that this new Board reconsidered the decision, and reaffirmed it! But I am glad to have been sacked, because it now makes it easy for me to compete!

A.E.: How does funding or lack thereof affect the production of drama or literature generally in Nigeria.

F.O.: The answer to that is obvious. How can one put up a play without financial support? How many people read, in order to support a literary industry? But even in the developed world (I am writing this from Berlin, at this year's Congress of the International PEN), you should come and see the financial support that artists enjoy from various state organizations, ranging from the city councils to national bodies set up precisely for that purpose! But it's not only the developed world. In all the francophone countries, in South Africa...it's a shame when we tell them that Nigeria gives no such support. And that's why we cannot vie for any of the international positions that our smaller neighbours are seizing right before our eyes left and right! It's really painful, I don't want to discuss it any longer... And you know that it's the state that stimulates the private sector in our country. Once the state is indifferent, then you know that no private company will be interested either. Yet this is a country in which artistic talent is abundant, and artists have gone on to win us some of the most prestigious prizes...!

A.E.: Is there any connection in your opinion, between the lack of state funding for the arts in Nigeria, bad governance and its resultant economic depression?

F.O.: Of course! It takes enlightened people to understand such questions, to appreciate the value of art and literature...

A.E.: Thank you for your precious time.



Poems by Femi Osofisan

Crystals

There is a hole with jewels and eyes of quartz.
Time’s metamorphoses of the message I hoarded there…

Oh wind and water have wounded me
have stolen the secrets of our hidden trysts

into seashell and lily, distilled
into seafern, the filaments of our story’s song –

Salt and shingle have betrayed me
have unwrapped the scars I hoarded here,

Conspired with the clay’ mysterious alchemists
to emend my hidden laments into madrigals…

And all they say is now in the air,
like sails unfurled, balloons, and wings:
the seeds upright and attentive,
like summoned trumpets

The water gathers around me:
Time to kneel now and bow my head
The seagulls gather above me:
I bare my chest, my sunburnt loins

The words which follow are my escorts…




Locusts


Hurry, they say –
the afternoon is all a-clamour

& young men and women are scattering everywhere
like discarded leaves

offals on a crossroads abandoned…

The locusts are here
but there is only discord among the afflicted

The carrions are here
they bare their teeth on the silos of our soil
on the baskets of our riches, our pots of oil…

The locusts are landed:
continuous division among the victims
is what the conqueror needs

parasites in stiff khakhi cloth or flowing gown
they eat our harvests and our virgins…

Alone
I stand by myself in the fable
(for one can be lonely
even in a dream) –
the afternoon is like a scream on my shoulders.

Motherland, release me…


Exile song

Echo of sparrow and seagull:
drone of departing beings:
It is the same siren cry,
the exile’s song

bless us, motherland,
we the orphans left behind…

we have waited in the dust of depleted libraries
looked at the lean look of the classrooms
where young forlorn eyes stare back like waiting stakes

we have read our future fate in the gaunt bands
gathering noisily over the garbage dumps

Hearts are breaking
& loves dry out
the wind is strong
& a new season has come
hostile to sedentary breeds

Come, says the road
the air is impatient:
it is the same summoning cry,
the exile’s song

Seeking consolation still, I think of my friends
who have all escaped elsewhere
& of the letters they send back monthly in exultation:

Alone, I
take a long walk into the spaces they left behind…


Become the journey


So wait
no longer
for the coming
of the ferry:

Forget
the promise
of the
paddle:

Turn, beloved.
TURN NOW!

become
the journey itself!



The poems by Femi Osofisan featured here are taken from Dream Seeker on a Divine Chain (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1993).