We can do better than this!

Obsessed
Actors: Idris Elba, Beyonce Knowles, Ali Larter
The most remarkable attribute of this movie is its outstanding picture quality and when you check the name on the back—Rain Forest Films, the motion picture company behind Motives—one would be less surprised.
In a similar vein, one could compare this film to Motives; they both theme on the trial of relationships. The cameras rolled in on Deker Charles, ably played by black hunk, Idris Elba, is an executive vice president of a financial firm and his wife, Beyonce, and their son,Kyle, moving into their new house and their gestures suggests a young rich family.
Another female character is introduced: Lisa, who worked as a temporary secretary to Derek. She plays a pivotal role in the denouement of the plot. This delusional woman fell in love with Derek and tried inadvertently to start an affair to no avail. She had no choice but to resort to ideas from her crazy brains and consequently, Derek marriage and family is put through the test of infidelity and trust by her actions.
This film could have easily passed as a Nollywood flick save the quality of the picture and appropriate directing. The actors and actresses were however remarkable and the sound tracks were apt. One can’t stray too much from the reason; Beyonce’s signature vocals.
This is not a movie I would want to watch again perhaps because the plot is not elaborate and might not necessary pass through what would call the African kaleidoscope. It’s mostly foreign and tends towards the realms of artificial.

The Audacity of Pain: A review

I am Memory
Author: Jumoke Verissimo
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 56
ISBN No: 978-978-088-065-1
Personally, I don’t like reviews. I think they are high-opinionated, utterly sentimental and directly related to book sales. But often I ask myself if sentiments can be distilled completely from a work of art. Can sentiment, the gnawing emotion that wills pen to paper and occasions the resultant work, be separated from Art? Absolutely not. So we can safely conclude that Sentiment is the artery through which Art in itself is fed and one is tempted to end it there.
In the fashion of American writer, Richard Matheson’s novel recently made into movie, I Am Legend, Ms. Verissimo substantiates her claim to her chosen genre, poetry, with her first collection of poems, I Am Memory. Erstwhile Jumoke Verissimo has been heard and read both as a performance poet and in literary journals respectively and I must say, her collection is anticipated and timely.
I noticed the book featured about thirteen poems, divided into four memory lanes after I got passed the rather lengthy acknowledgments. Then I launched into the first of her offerings which perhaps is her most outstanding poem, Sequence (of desire).
This love poem is nothing like the Shakespearian sonnets, or Robert Frost’s verses, its much bolder, penned specifically for performance. The lyricism is quite remarkable and works in tandem with the eloquent string of emotions that built into a robust narrative on one of the most unifying themes in the universe. Recently I was privileged to watch a performance and I was struck with awe.
As a poet, Ms Verissimo is versatile as well as judicious in her use of literary mechanics to furnish poems with a fluid progression. Like the Free Verse poet she is, her style borders more on internal rhythm than rhyme and stanzas, often uneven, do not mince or maneuver words, rather it hits the proverbial nail on the head. Generously, she coins words with pun intended. Words such as Shell-ers, aba-shed are used to further buttress and delineate her emotions, setting them as roots and templates for revisiting issues that bulked most of her themes. Truly, an African poet can’t be without activism.
I am memory revisits past issues swept under the carpet of history, gnaws old scars and initiate new tears and perspective to the several woes that have betide the Nigerian state. So often, the poet assumes an angry tone and one could envision the pains the poet had sifted into verses. Her poems tackled themes like tyranny and dictatorship, hunger and famine, unsolved murders of politicians, unjust killings, leaving out only HIV/AIDS to have become a complete personal reproach on African sensibilities.
Ms Verissimo has penned a book of nostalgic history. She has collected poems that truly reflect the reactions of a bona fide Nigerian to the turbulence and tribulation the nation has faced for ages. This collection is a bold stance of pain and other emotions, filtering through the pores of gross indifference and achieving a communal cry of protest.
With this collection, Ms Verissimo asserts and secures herself a seat on the table of the new Nigerian contemporary poets, the likes of Ifowodo Ogaga, Chiedu Ezeanah, Lola Shoneyin, Tade Ipadeola, Niran okewole etc. No doubt she would be heard from for a while.

Clinical Blues I

This poem is a product of boredom in a class of obstetrics. talk about disillusionment, sometimes i wonder how i found my feet in the medical school. but thats another story. that afternoon, i actively poured my thoughts in my notes and what i have written below is the refined composition. i hope its enjoyable!

Clinical Blues

Sing me a song
not from your larynx
probe deep
deeper into lungs,
the recesses of your soul

I am a lonesome observer,
the clinical sentinel
who sits still to wage
wars against infirmities

And your organic sax
plunges snot and sounds
into my drink of of patience
the truth is eerie,tall
like swabs of heavy winds

Bored purveyor!
where lies your magic
your medicine of
doses and regimen
that mount eternal
wars against Hypnos

The blip of an ailing heart
tolls a symphony of symptoms
but am no open chest surgeon
for I'm a jazz pianist
With little stint with blood

The morbid applause of the gut
claps of bilious thunder
in the economy of sound
music is found
in scribbles,
in slow latent dribbles
drops and drips
beams of ray scamper
as life shudder into light
and souls slip into purgatory

Measuring Habila

Book: Measuring Time
Pages: 322
Year of Publication: 2007
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
ISSN No: 978-978-080-513-5
A writer’s ability to simulate reality borders both on his creative acumen and experience. Habila, fully knowing this, wrote his sophomore attempt at “the novel” after garnering these rather important writer-ly ingredients. I digress a bit.
His first effort launched him into widespread literary acclaim and a splash of notable literary prizes, the Caine( fondly referred to as the African Booker) and the Commonwealth First Book Prizes inclusive. Waiting for An Angel, his debut collection of inter-connected short stories, fashioned after John Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heavens, wrote into the depths of Nigerian condition during the military regimes.
Measuring Time, which also tackled topical issues, is a very much different book. Habila, in an interview, said that he always knew he wanted to write the book even before he wrote his first. This seemed similar to Orange-prize winning Chimamanda Adichie’s response when she was quizzed about Half of a yellow Sun, also her second novel.
The mastery of a writer hinges on his ability to write directly into the human conditions. Habila aptly did so with Measuring Time, and for this discourse, the medical conditions of his characters are of utmost importance.
Mamo, the protagonist, is a twin who suffered a blood condition peculiar to the blacks. The medical practitioners would call it Blood Dyscrasia, Hemoglobinopathies but it remains Sickle-Cell Disease, a popular scourge that plagues one out of every four blacks.
Mamo inherited his traits from both his parents. His mother, also sickly, died shortly after she delivered the twins. Her death was peculiar to complications resulting from multiple gestation, her peculiar blood condition and untoward health care, for she was delivered at home with very little medical intervention proffered by a midwife.
Habila captured the ill-health that plagued Mamo as a child. Being motherless, his aunt played a pivotal role in his staying alive in spite of his sickly predispositions, telling him fairytales which in exact ‘habilan’ words goes thus:
He imagined the stories insinuating themselves into his veins, flushing out the sickle-shaped, hemoglobin-deficient red cells that clogged the nodes in his veins and caused his joints to swell painfully. It was the stories and not folic acid tablets that he swallowed daily or the green vegetables and liver that were staples in his diet, or the special care not to get bitten by mosquitoes; it was his auntie’s stories slowly working their magic in his veins, keeping him alive.(P. 19)
Numerous medical conditions also come to fore: Waziri, a major character in the denouement of the plot, suffered from a squint: “one of his eyes, the left one was off focus”; Binta, the lady to which Mamo lost the innocence of his youth, was an incurable nymphomaniac who eventually dies by the hands of sexually transmitted infections, presumably AIDS, from Habila reference to her shriveling up, an euphemism for profound weight loss; Sadiya, Mamo’s father’s first and only love suffered a stroke that affected her memories.
Mamo, set back by his blood condition, lacked the physical vigour he needed to pursue his desire to become a solider like his brother, La Mamo. Habila attests to his having to twin his major character in a similar fashion to fellow African writers like Chimamanda Adichie(Half of a Yellow Sun), Diana Evans(26a), and Helen Oyeyemi( The Icarus Girl). This was a major architectural decision that held the literary outlay affording Habila an avenue to wedge several subthemes including War, Crime, Corruption, and Politics amongst other human sensibilities into the structure of his novel. And also since La Mamo, the twin brother, did not have a voice in the narrative. His sojourn in the world had to be captured in several letters spanning the intervals he spent abroad fighting wars, a similar fashion to Lekan Oyegoke’s novel.
Like most writers, Habila is aware of the role a love story plays in the novel. The love story is the horse on which the plot rides; easily, it provides the tension and suspense that turn pages and tugs at the heart of readers. Zara, whom Mamo fell in love with, is a matrimonial fugitive seeking respite in the obscurity of her hometown. A single mother abused often by her soldier husband, who also fell in love with Mamo to requite his affections, but strangely their love resolves in unfortunate circumstances.
It is also important to note that Habila learnt from the masters. Himself, a contemporary writer, he drew a lot from his encounters with previous influential writers, the likes of John Steinbeck and Alex Laguma, a South African who wrote prolifically against Apartheid. Of mice and men and A walk in the Night are chapter titles in the book but are also important books authored by the aforementioned writers. Plutarch, a greek philosopher and writer, also was of beneficial influence. His Parallel Lives, a book of four single biographies and twenty-seven pair of biographies, is an important fabric to the essence of the major theme. The novel raised pertinent, even disturbing questions, about the veracity of history and Mamo the protagonist in his attempt to establish true history wrote the biographies of ordinary people that constituted Keti, where most of the story is set.
It’s noteworthy that Habila is no medical expert. However in his attempt at transmuting his research work on Sickle-cell Anaemia into fluid sentences firing up vivid images into reader’s mind, he stepped on some medical terminologies. But all misgivings would be forgiven, for he has indeed written an important book on history for posterity.

On This Year's African Booker

It was a good thing the Caine Prize people thought it right to put out the shortlists on their website. I, like many handicapped literary enthusiasts, would have mastered story titles, perhaps fantasize about their text and waited till the clincher is announced late July. But instead, this year is better and by God, I have the five stories downloaded into my little laptop, all for my enjoyable consumption.
So I started out with End Of Skill, the Ghanaian story trashed by Toni Kan. Kan did put this story down, below Chikwava’s Dancing to the Jazz Goblin and His rhythms which I was opportune to read in a ride out the back of Tade Ipadeola’s friend car after a writer’s meet at The Palms. But reading through Kabu’s story about a weaver who sold his father’s legacy and passion for western currencies, I concluded that the story was not entirely as weak as Kan purported it to be, although the romance with weaving was in excess and of little import to the progression of plot and its denouement. In other words, if we excise Kabu’s ramblings on Kente and spice what is left, we still have his good story, which is obviously not my Caine Prize winner.
Next on my list is Waiting, E.C Osondu’s second chance to clinch the prize he narrowed missed with Jimmy Carter’s eyes in 2007. I was somewhat disappointed that his AGNI published story didn’t win and I can’t proffer reasons because I didn’t read the other entries. But Waiting, I must say, is not as strong as Jimmy Carter’s Eyes. Never. In his romance with refugee children and their plights, Osondu chronicled in his usual straight albeit short prose his imaginations which I find sympathetic but shallow. Personally, I was not moved. And I doubt if the judges would be.
Next is Parselolo Kantai’s story, You Wreck Her. Parselolo comes highly recommended so as I gunned down his scripted thoughts I couldn’t but feel refreshed reading through his gospel on an already trite theme. It’s refreshing perhaps because of unique narrative. There was an elusive manner in which the story began but the story holds through for the reader to immense in the writer’s recesses and the empathy generated in the reader’s mind is neither induced by the writer’s choice of words or the mood portrayed. With so much said, its safe to conclude that the story is a favourite.
But not so fast, Mukoma wa Ngugi also told a good tale, How Kamau wa Ngugi escaped into Exile. I find that title exasperating but it was while reading these stories I found how perfectly edited these stories were, if not for anything, I think it’s a fine reason they made the shortlist. Kamau comes as a fugitive activist fleeing from the enforcement agencies who sought him and in his escape in goes through a lot that exposed to the reader the depth and the gory details of the inhuman experiences he fought against. I liked the feel of love in the story that was soon threaded behind the serious fabric of its themes.
Last but not the least is Alistair Morgan’s story which also came highly recommended and which I think would be a popular choice. Personally, I respect this product of his narrative and if history is anything to go by, the last winner was also South African. The story written in first person in the opening lines got me questioning what African sensibilities it appealed to? I thought it was well written but could have passed as western prose touching on themes like gruesomeness of reality. I was, I must admit, a little too quick to pass judgment, for the story built into an African sensibility. However, the genius of Alistair’s craft can be based on his dwelling more on how human adapt to his theme rather than running graffiti on their actual gruesome consequences. I reiterate that it’s probably the popular choice, but we must wait till July to know the true clincher.

Coping With Grief: A John Irving Approach

Whilst reading Stephen King’s semi-autobiographical book On writing, I found a page that he recommended some books as “great reads”. John Irving’s A widow for One year was one of them. I was not surprised for I was not new to Irving’s work. I had read his National Book Award winning The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules that clinched him the best screenplay Academy award. So when I happened upon the book for sale, I was quick to make the purchase and instantly began to read.
From the first line, I was enthralled. The novel chronicled the death of two sons of a family and how various characters struggled to overcome their grief. The central character, Ruth, was conceived after the death of her siblings and the first part of the novel began absurdly with the four-year- old walking in on her mother and her father’s driver in a strange act of sex.
Very peculiar to Irving’s writings are characters as writers. In this novel, Irving went a little too experimental: every character that mattered to grand scheme of the plot were writers or involved intricately with writing: Ruth was a best-selling novelist; her father, Ted, resorted to children stories after he had written previous unremarkable adult novels; her mother, Marion, became a crime writer whilst she sought closure after the disastrous loss of her two sons in an unfortunate auto crash; Ed, her father’s driver, wrote several novels about young men falling in love with older women, numerous remakes of his circumstantial affair with Ruth’s mother; Hannah, Ruth’s best friend was a journalist liberal about her sexual relations; Ruth’s Editor became her husband. And so the waft welted into a hob of Irving’s imagination of writerly characters.
The first part of the novel, Summer 1958, introduced the key characters: Ted, Marion, Ed and little Ruth. Ed takes up a vacation job of being Ted’s driver and he is soon accustomed to Ted’s predilection for seducing young mothers using his fame as a children writer to lure them to pose for his children books. Gradually, he peels off their propriety and gets them to pose nude after which an affair usually ensued. However these affairs, usually short-lived and prolific, did not go unacknowledged by Marion whom Ed had found attractive. The webs of the story spun Ed right into the Marion’s bed and she exposed the virile teenager to sex, a tangible substitute for his habitual masturbations.
We are introduced early to a defunct family system. All the values that characterized family lacked and a young daughter was perhaps the sole reason against actual divorce. Both parents handled their grief in separate manners: Ted became a drunk and perpetual womanizer and his beautiful wife grew cold and steely almost frigid until her sexual encounters with Ed, who easily was her dead son’s age mate.
Memories of the boys were preserved as pictures hung around the house and one is often a tourist offered privileged information about the reasons that occasioned the snapshots and the typical familial circumstances involved. This novel in this way is quite psychological; it helps to discover how people cope with blunt pain, grief. Toward the end of first part, Marion leaves home, leaving her young daughter to her husband’s care; Ed returns home and Ted employs a Mexican couple as gardener and nanny.
The second part of the book teleports us to the fall of 1990. We meet Ruth, an accomplished best-selling novelist with two efforts pegged to her belt; Ed, 48, had written more novels but had less success and still had not outgrown his obsession for Ruth’s mother.
The second part is mostly about Ruth’s life as a writer: her sensibilities and prejudice, if you may. The creative process involved in coming up with what her friend, Hannah, described as “autobiographical” novel. This, Ruth objected until an idea struck her to write a novel about such a delicate themes as sex and depravity. Her research led her in close contact with prostitutes; where she witnessed the murder of a prostitute while “researching” in the prostitute’s closet. It’s in the phase that Africa gets a mention by the way of fleeting Ghanaian prostitutes in a brothel landscape, perhaps that makes Women Trafficking registered in the minds of Africans and Non-Africans alike.
Ruth proceeds to give vital information that helps a police officer apprehend the murderer and she also wrote a novel about the experience. She had earlier been having second thoughts about getting married to her editor but after her experience, she got married and forgave Hannah who had warmed her way into her father’s bed. She unfortunately lost her husband in circumstances I found “questionable”, and she became a widow like one of the characters in her previous novels. Her father also committed to suicide in the circumstances I have wanting in clarification.
Resolution of themes occurred in the final segment of the book when Ruth discovers her mother was a crime writer who wrote novels that had psychological undertones and always alluded to “two missing kids”. Ruth bore a son, Graham, whom she named after Graham Greene, one of her favourite writer’s whose biography held her interest and got numerous mentions in the novel. She also by chance met the police officer, who was also a fan of her novels, had they fell in love in circumstances I find “questionable”.
Irving’s succinctly raised themes and matters of discourse which he made relevant to his novel: of loss and how people handled Grief; of the novelist and the creative process; of how earlier events predispose individuals to reoccurrence and perhaps the unpredictable patterns of fate most especially love and death.
If it serves as any consolation, the denouement after a torturous course of the novelist involved Ruth finally finding love in the arms of a retired Dutch police officer and Marion’s return to Ed’s life in a nick of time to prevent his belated mid-life crisis. And the ending bore unmistakable resemblance to the beginning, when Ruth sights Ed and her mother again together and Marion said, “Don’t cry honey, It’s just Eddie and me”.

The diagnosis of my coma

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its being a a while since i last held a pen to write. my laptop had issues and i had become to lazy to undergo the stress of having to type and queue up at cybercafe to publish online. but now its back and am back and i hope to be faithful to my blog! easy