The Farmer’s Daughter (Poems on the Borderline) by Funke Awodiya – Review——— Akwu Sunday Victor
(Abridged version)
The human condition is a ‘material for poetry.’ It encompasses the
generality of situations that humans face in getting along with each
other and the world. Poets over the years pondered upon the meaning of
life and the functionality of man in creation. Although there is no
consensual understanding on these issues, they have over the years been
pivotal concerns of poets and poetry. The issue of human condition is
brooded poetically and philosophically by the Medical Sociologist and
Poet: Funke Awodiya in her thematically meaty collection of poems: The
Farmer’s Daughter.
The eighty pages collection of poems contains fifty six poems. The
poems are not split thematically. Encroaching further into the poetry
collection, the reader encounters different kinds of poems with
divergent structures and aesthetic configurations. The first poem, “My
Dreams” captures a dream that was dreamt with eyes opened “my opened-eye
dreams.” The poetess dreamt that her country suddenly become “a land of
green moves on stream/Greener than the greener pastures I seek.” In the
second stanza, her country becomes a place where there is no more “bomb
phobia” and “without boko-haramic phobia.” The country is “away from
the siege of bestiality.” But the dream becomes a phantom and the
imagery of social advancement evinced in us crumbled like a pack of
cards when in the last line of the fourth stanza the poetess says: “wake
me when my dream comes true” (13).
Another human condition is painted in the poem, “Tales of Laraba.”
The condition graphically painted is that of love, lost and regret.
Laraba when she was a maiden was beautiful and men flocked to her “like
bees beseech the flower pollen.” This makes her to “display” her
“endowment” like “the peacock.” In the days of her youth, “like polished
ornaments” her “dark skin glows.” But she fails to realize that time
corrupts all things. However, with the passage of time, “my beauty fades
like green grass at dusk.” Life itself is cyclic. Her “breasts’
turgidity wanes,” and her “skin shuns renewal regimes” (19). She becomes
a social recluse and a Niobe. The poem, “Cursed be That Day,” on the
other hand, depicts a woman who uses her life in social services to the
extent of sacrificing it to safe mankind. Recall that in 2014, Ebola
invaded Nigeria and many doctors and nurses stood up gallantly against
the scythe of the ravaging virus. The battle became fierce that some
doctors lost their lives and one of such was Dr. Ameyo Adadevoh. The
poem itself is a eulogy of the doctor’s sacrifice to humanity. The day
the virus entered the country is specifically cursed but “like a gallant
soldier” the doctor “died saving lives” (20).
The poem “The Farmer’s Daughter” is a sociopolitical poem. It
interrogates the present sociopolitical condition of Nigeria a country
full of paradoxes: A country that is extremely endowed but the
inhabitants extremely poor. The poetess sees herself as a social product
but her society’s wealth floods “into the mouths of termites.”
Nigerians are “robbed and starved to death” and their resources find
their ways into the neocolonialist countries. Thus, the toils of the
people are looted and stored in “barns overseas.” Besides that, the
wealth of the country makes the neocolonial countries wealthier.
Nigerians become “alms” beggars “across the seas” (40). The poem is a
poem of lachrymation and disillusionment.
There are poems that have Yoruba titles these include: “Ojokoro” (31)
“Sisi Alagbo” (41), “Alakada” (47), “Arewa” (54), “Oye” (55),
“Iyaniwura” (58), “Adu ma dan” (60), “Olufunmilola” (76). These poems
are amongst the finest in the collection. The beauty of the poems lies
in their lyricism, cultural allusion, and reliance on African oral
poetic tradition. The poems each has its own thematic preoccupation but
remains aesthetically beautiful and thematically relevant. Some of the
poems that are poignant and on the borderline between oral tradition and
the modern African poetic tradition include: “Magic kitchen” (75),
“Lagoon” (73), “Lagos of the borderline” (70-71), “Who shall I wear his
crown” (65-6). The poem “Who shall I make wear his crown” looks at what
it takes to be married to men from Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa and men from
Niger Delta. It is a celebration of our unity in diversity.
Funke Awodiya is a poetess that the literary world should take note
of. Although this is her first collection of poems, it is clear that she
has mastered the craft of versification and sublimity and the African
oral tradition. In her poems, you noticed the unity of music, poetry and
speech. Her social, political, cultural and aesthetic vision has not by
any means been shrouded in a thick and unless labyrinth of obscure
diction. The simplicity of her language is by no means element of
weakness or naivety, the beauty of her poetry lies in its simplicity,
lyricism and subtlety.
Her use of language is apt, poignant and self-contained but the
poetess made use of some metaphors that are cliché and obsolete. The use
of novel imagery in place of the ones used would have greatly enhanced
the beauty and elegance of her poetry. Some of the clichés include:
“like a gallant soldier” (20), “greener than greener pastures” (13), “my
beauty fades like green grass” (18), “like a leper, I stay indoor”
(18), “my tears flow like the Nile” (19), “a sacrificial lamb” (20),
“speed of light” (22), “soar like an eagle” (29), “like a star” (60),
“like an illumination” (26). The collection is well edited. However, few
typographic errors stubbornly reared their heads but they do not in any
way impede the joy derived from reading the collection. In deed the
collection of poems, The Farmer’s Daughter (Poems on the Borderline) is a
gift of jocundity to a century bedeviled by human tragedies such as
religious intolerance, extremism, terrorism, bad governance and strange
ailments.
Awodiya, Funke. The Farmer’s Daughter (Poems on the Borderline). Lagos: Something for Everybody Ventures, 2016.
Otukpo, Benue State
10.7.2016
Akwu Sunday Victor is a poet and foremost critic of Contemporary African
writing. He holds a degree in English and Literary Studies from Kogi
State University, Anyigba, Kogi State, Nigeria and a postgraduate
student of Literature.
On the Wings of the Wind: Poems by Akeem Lasisi
INTRO
Let me sing my widow’s mite
Into the immortal thrift
Of earlier brides
Although I may be a thin-handed child,
I have a role to play in my mother’s chores.
No matter how small the organ of the groom
He will not borrow another man’s for the midnight course.
This eve of my flight,
I wish to tour the universe on a bill of words,
Weaving weird and winsome sounds
Into one nuclear family of borderless songs.
I hook my voice
To the server of time,
Strike a bilateral chord
With unassuming angels of seasonless things.
I am in tune with some other realms
Where their nights are brighter than noons
Where autumns are cool,
Winters warmer than interior chamber of a pregnant womb.
poem: Let by osigwe Benjamin
(Organier BEAUTY OF WORDS)
(If she always wants ‘Mr right’. How e take concern you. After all, am not tired of ‘righting’ myself for her)
Let the sky break.
If it likes:
Into letters,
Carving out your name.
Let the world stop to spin
If it truly wants,
Leaving the pleasures of nature,
Out of its stagnancy.
For on the beautiful lips of nature
Shall we kiss away our worries.
Let Eagles stop to fly
If they want
But let the choristers of birds
Not leave their wings
Unattended to.
With them, they would fly up high
Composing songs of the soul.
I will chant you words
From the womb of my heart
And baptize you with
The encyclopedia in my mouth.
Let, the sun fall too
If it wants.
After all, it’s a distraction.
It brightens the sweat in my head
And make you feel
I am too scared
To torch your lips with mine.
Let churches pray against
heart failures too
I want mine to not fail
When it’s time to say “Yes I Do”
Because not marrying you
Is the illusion
I don’t want to be lost in.
