African literature enthusiasts always want to have some feel of the continental literary harvests, and that’s why Kowry Kreations Media keeps giving it out, every month, through their mind-blowing programme, Poetry Potter, an event that has, in the past, attracted all sorts of writers and artistes, on a podium that rightfully gives you the opportunity to listen to some of the best young musicians, strutting away on their guitars and the exhilarating young poets read aloud their poems, either backed by tracks that keep the performance glowing, or backed by the audience who keep applauding as these readings and performances take place. One can even mistake Poetry Potter for something else: a TV show, with the audience witnessing the breathtaking interview sessions that will feature the guest artiste(s) on the stage, where the audience will also have the chance to throw out questions and get brilliant answers. It’s all fun.
And just on the 27th of September, 2008, the 23rd edition of the programme took place inside Rotunda Hall of the National Library, Yaba. The guest writers were Jude Dibia, author of highly acclaimed novel, Walking with Shadows and award-winning Unbridled, which has just been shortlisted for the $50,000 NLNG Prize for Literature; then, the Guardian columnist and scriptwriter, Tosyn Bucknor, whose writings have held her audience spellbound for long. This was exactly why those who have read these two authors didn’t just sit back at home and sip on their tea-cups or go to bars to drink beers on a bright Saturday afternoon, but quietly arrived the venue, grabbing the seats and making themselves comfortable as the Master-of-Ceremony, Seun Ajayi, mounted the stage and with his lively self, he caught his audience chuckling like children at an extravagant birthday party. He was later to be joined by the beautiful and sassy Oyinda, whose appearance kept some of her admirers glued to their seats.
Cornerstone, acoustic guitar player and reggae musician enlivened the atmosphere when did a great rendition of a song which celebrates the colour of the black man. It was a heartwarming song that kept the audience in a terrific mood. Other musicians were called onto the stage to perform as well, and the young and mesmerizing poet, Esther Body-Lawson read a poem, Being Love, which the audience applauded to after her performance. They were actually awestruck, for her smartness and boldness onstage, unlike other kids who go around sowing their teenage oaths.
The glorious evening actually started when Tosyn Bucknor was called onto the stage to introduce herself. She was as lively as her columns are, and quite reserved. She called herself a ‘wordsmith’, ‘a writer in the entertainment world’, which fit her. When asked what drove her into writing, even when she graduated as a Lawyer, she said: ‘My venture into Law wasn’t out of persuasion. I wanted to read Law, that's all. Then, my venture into writing was a way to let it go, to express myself’. While growing up, she said, she always locked herself up, writing and whenever anything happened to her, an inspiration for a story sprang up. Thereafter, she was meant to talk about her organization, which was recently launched, called THESE GENES. When asked why she decided to start such organization, she rivelled the audience by saying: ‘I was born a sickle-cell. When I was growing up, I felt useless. I was always depressed and felt really suicidal. Then as I grew older, I grew out of it and now, I want to let people know that people with sickle are actually no different from YOU. You should use your body as long as you are alive’. Nice choice of words indeed. And that’s why her readers feel the need to meet her in person, which she confirmed onstage about her writing, this way: ‘Writing is a personal thing. I write like I talk. It just comes to me naturally. Well, in the past, I was always afraid to identify myself as a writer’. After a word of advice to the young people in the audience, she went on to read some parts of a writing she had done several years ago, titled, ‘Why I Don’t Want To Get Married And Have Children’. Of course, the audience agreed the writing was too emotional and real.
Then, after an interval of songs, Jude Dibia also came on stage and introduced himself, after which he read from his Note Book, as he said he had just scribbled the idea before he came, clearly defining the writer, not as a celebrity, but as a storyteller, and the storyteller as an artisan of narration. With this, he received a great applause from his teeming fans. When asked how he balances writing and work by Seun, he said he writes a lot in the morning. And about his writing he said: ‘When I write, I don’t think of my sex. I see myself as faceless, sexless’, and this, as assumed, was what gave birth to Walking with Shadows, a novel he said, was borne out of What Ifs, which he clearly explained. Well, it has been noted that the covers of his books thrill his readers, to which he said he pays rapt attention to during their designings. Jude Dibia read an excerpt from Unbridled, when the narrator of his story conceives the idea of travelling to England, after which he advised the youths to ‘stay behind in Nigeria and contribute’.
After this section, the award-winning poet, Uche Nwadinachi did one of the most charming performances that kept the audience grappling for more. Immediately after his performance, there was the section where Tosyn Bucknor and Jude Dibia went back to the stage to answer questions from the audience. Three people were singled out to question Tosyn and three, also, for Jude.
Jude Dibia was asked how the inspiration for Walking with Shadows came and if the society informs the writer. ‘The society doesn’t inform the writer’, he said, which he went on to explain and tell vividly how the inspiration for this controversial novel came. He was also asked how he was able to fix himself into the head of a woman to narrate the scintillating tale in Unbridled, which he attributed to the fact that he spoke a lot to women to understand how they talk and the online blog which he started to actually write the story, to see how well the female voice works. For Tosyn, she was asked what effort as a writer she had made to tackle the marginalization of people with sickle-cell. ‘I write to express their pains and let people know that these people with sickle-cell are really part of the world. There are lies that when you marry someone who has this blood type or other day, you certainly will have a child with sickle-cell. These are just lies. And these are the things I try writing about. To make them pretty clear’, she said.
The evening was wrapped up quite unusually. The Chief Executive Officer of Kowry Kreations Media, Aderemi Adegbite, when asked if there has been some support from corporate organizations for the continuation of this event, felt repulsed: ‘None. A few persons have supported in the past.'
Certainly, it should be assumed that Nigerians don’t believe in Nigerians.
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