Author: The Nation

By Gbenga Aderanti

LETTER to Lilly is a gripping collection of poetry, authored by Funmi Coker, published this year, 2021 by United Kingdom publishing firm: The Roaring Lion Newcastle.

Coker’s impressive debut pulses with rhythms and assertiveness as it talks defiance against accepted order. The uplifting and inspiring “What Were You Told” urges all females, from a girl child to a mature woman, to believe in their own abilities while examining the unfair expectations and practices when it comes to the fairer sex. In “How Do You Sleep,” Coker delves into gender inequality, class and race disparity, faith and religion and asks relevant questions, such as, “How do you sleep when you lie?/ say man is wood,/ a woman is wool./ say, your wife is your most expensive item,/ an object for exhibition./ say, she’s a tool/ & you’re a worker.” whereas the title poem “Letter to Lilly” celebrates female beauty, compassion, and strength: “Girl, you are MELODY./ You make music soothing./ You are the dream, the dreamland./ Never forget. Never.” Coker infuses the collection with emotion, hard truths, old practices, rightful anger, and descriptions of the discriminations that exist for women, including girl child, particularly in Africa. The poems contemplate gender inequality (“Invention:” “Draw a woman, label her less than you would a man,” “A Pint of Madness:” Say, a woman has no grit,/ she cannot connect the dots,” and “The Birth of Silence:” “again the flat screen flutter/ at Dad’s voice. Again, freckles/ blanket Mum’s skin like desperate dews/ blotting the sky.”) rampant, especially in Black nations, and advise that every girl should consider herself beyond the concerns of the girl-child. Humming with life, the poems in the collection create a collage of universal female experiences while interweaving themes of identity, race, and belief.

The beautiful collection of poems treats the issue of gender inequality in the society, because the world is largely patriarchal. It is strongly evident in the sixth and thirty-third poems (‘Even Numbers’ and ‘A Poem of Adjusted Clichés ’). In the poem ‘Even Numbers’, the persona uses a symbol—evident in the title; biblical allusions and metaphors to say that both men and women are the same. Even numbers connote the idea of a pair. And another word for ‘a pair’ could be two similar things taken together/as same. Also, in making reference to the biblical creation story of Eden, the persona pinpoints the creation of opposites in ‘seed-time & harvest/ cold & heat, summer & winter’ which God created alongside two different genders, but as one (‘you two are one- even’).

Lastly, in ‘Daughters of our Land’, the persona says that: ‘The daughters of our land become/ women before they learn to be girls./ That’s the way of our land,/ But who made it so? The rhetorical question is meant to create a ponder in a world where girls are given into marriage before they are matured.

The collection also treats the theme of domestic violence on women and its horrors in the poems: ‘The Birth of Silence’ and ‘Her Body Was a Cracked Wall’. In ‘The Birth of Silence’, a child tells the horror of how the father beats the mother at home. The child suggests how the father drowns the mother’s voice by raising the volume of ‘the flat screen’. The child further compared the mother’s skin to that ‘desperate dews blotting the sky’. This gives the reader a mental picture of scars on the body.

The poet uses a dramatic form to create a scene of how people could be possibly mistaken the ability for a being to switch characters so well for spiritual possession. The personae’s gender is not stated which means it could be any gender. In the second stanza, it suggests how people mistaken to be possessed are whipped to scars with brooms. The persona went on to say in the third stanza to show more abuse… as ‘candle wax burned deliverance into my skin.’

There is an honesty to Coker’s writing as she delves into gender inequalities, and her sharp rendering of unfair gender practices is wholly appealing. Rhythmic and eloquent, this arresting collection is a must-read for every female.

Ada Udechukwu is home after seventeen years absence from the Nigerian art scene. She is involved in a solo art exhibition titled particles of motion holding in Lagos. A visual artist, poet, novelist and short story writer, Udechukwu first studied English and Literature before crossing over to the visual art. In this write-up, EDOZIE UDEZE examines the professional journey of this audacious, multi-talented artist who once made the shortlist of the Caine prize for African writing with her story Night Bus.

ADA Udechukwu is a multi-talented artist.  She is not just a painter, a visual artist, she is also a poet, a novelist, particularly noted for her love for short stories; novellas, where she has risen to prove her prowess.  At the moment, her works are on display at the Wheatbaker, Lagos.  The title of the art exhibition is particles of motion; motion in multi-faceted forms.

The solo exhibition is coming after her seventeen years sojourn to the USA.  Udechukwu, along with her husband Professor Obiora Udechukwu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, left the shores of Nigeria in 1997.  It was at the height of the military era.  Obiora is also a visual artist, who for many years, commanded attention and respect at the Nsukka School of Art.  He had seen many great artists through the labyrinths of artistic tutelage.

Particles of motion embodies Ada’s latest works which also has some elements of poetry in them.  For seventeen years, she busied herself with works that encroach exclusively on the issues that interest the society.  She does not only paint, she also draws and uses poetry to embellish them.  There is this deep aroma of beauty that emanates therefore from her artistic offerings.

An award – winning writer cum painter, Udechukwu studied English and Literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.  She was taught by Professor Chinua Achebe who made a lot of impact on her.  After that, she took an MFA degree in Creative Writing and Literature from the Bennigton College, Vermont.  This has helped her a lot to deepen her works in both visual and literature.

Born in 1960 in Enugu to an Igbo father and an American mother, Udechukwu is one of the few female artists that still belongs to the Nsukka art group.  Her works come out deep.  She is imbued with the traditional Igbo uli motif.  It is a motif that embellishes and celebrates women in their natural, untainted beauty and elegance.  Udechukwu cherishes this a lot and then uses poetry to deepen the effect.

At the moment, she is based in Los Angeles, the United States of America where she equally devotes time enough to churn out prose works, poetms, doing so much also to celebrate children literature.  In 2007, her story, Night Bus, made the shortlist of the Caine Prize for African writing.  That story caught the attention of many literary gurus even though she did not eventually win the prize.  In it were sentiments, deep literary sentiments of someone who was once an apostle of Chinua Achebe.

She has also published a book of poems titled, Women, Me.  Her book on children is titled Herero.  Even then, her short stories have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.  And so, in particles of motion, she immerses herself in the convenient marriage between visual, and poetry.  Thus far, she has succeeded in creating a deeper impression that knocks creativity open.  There is no better way for such an artist to make her case clearly defined.

This is why Mbanefo-Obiago the curator of her works simply says “Udechukwu combines elements of poetry woven around her lyrical art”.  True to type, Udechukwu finds the two inseparable.  So as you glimpse through her works, the love for poetry grips you, while the lure for the visual arouses your interest.  Together, both reinforce emotion, taking you deep into the foyers of time; time when society rummaged in moments of love, peace and unbridled tolerance.

Earlier in her career as a painter, she had indulged in the usage of fabrics.  She indeed began by painting on fabrics, doing designs on clothing.  Then she used to love restrained linear style a lot.  However, this helped to create a bigger horizon for her in her artistic and painting career as time went on.

In 1988, she began to make paintings on paper, using ink and water colour.  They were all attempts in the strictest sense of it for her to balance her life as a woman and as an artist.  But then the works quickly examine the complexities of multicultural and intercultural identities, inside and outside Africa.

Owing to the deep nature of her works, a lot of private art galleries in Europe, America and Nigeria have acquired her works.  There are some in the Newark Museums of Art, USA.  Others are in Nigeria, Europe, where she enjoys international attention and acclaim.  As she goes on with her solo art exhibition which will end on July 25, there are lots of issues to learn from the theme of particles of motion.  Here’s therefore a society that hinges on social issues evoke that emotion; emotion steeped in deep motion.  But when  will these particles of motion finally peter out?