AT THE 11TH LAGOS BOOK FAIR AND ART FESTIVAL

TODAY IS THE FINAL DAY OF


The 11th Lagos Book and Art Festival is holding November 13 – 15, 2009 at the National Theatre Complex, Iganmu Lagos.

The Festival will feature exhibition by Bookshops, Publishers, Libraries and "freelance" individual exhibitors; a huge Art Fair featuring a variety of works by galleries, art-dealers and individual artists; live music, dance, drama and live performances.

FRIDAY, November 13 will feature events such as Mentoring Kids by Eugenia Abu at 11 am, followed by Children Craft Workshops, Play Groups and Performances. The final stage of the Book Trek: the Quest for the Most Literate Student holds at 2pm and will involve the review and the discussion of various books.

SATURDAY, November 14 will kickoff with Conversation: Lagos in the Imagination (3) with extensive references to Isi Joy Bewaji’s Eko Dialogue, Tejo Cole’s One Day is For The Thief, Odia Ofeimun’s Lagos of the Poets and Sefi Atta’s Swallow. There will be a Publishers Roundtable: Why I Publish What I Publish from 2pm to 4pm. Festival Party celebrating Segun Sofowote@70, Frank Okonta@70, Sammy Olagbaju@70, Tunji Oyelana@70, Mahmoud Ali Balogun@50, Nobert Young@50, Afolabi Adesanya@50, George Uffot@50, Edmund Enaibe@50, Kunle Adeyemi@50 will start at 5pm with music by Fatai Rolling Dollar.

SUNDAY, November 15 will open with a Youth Conference: Creativity and Empowerment, featuring a panel of young creative artists and art managers; convened by Positive Development Foundation and Youth Bank. Art Stampede will come up at 1pm.

Telephone: Toyin Akinosho 08057622415 and Kafayat Quadri 07029025583

Email: stampedecorang@gmail.com

The power of chanting to the priestess of poetry

BY UCHE UWADINACHI
P.O.P






The nursery rhymes of unending skipping sound resounding from the high-rise windows and the slit walls of the kindergarten school, remains the oldest known and surest way of imparting alphabets, sounds, objects and ideas, to a classroom of children, who are freshly being opened up to the mystery of learning and acquiring all the needed skills with which to gulp up knowledge as they grow up.

The fundamental of nursery education is the very tool employed by the poet who takes after the method of the teacher, who must function as the choir master, charging out the call to chant that is automatically echoed by the pupils to glean the golden fleece home.

The chant of poetry is not any different in the hands of the priestess of poetry, the wildest of imagination engages the emotions in a celebration of words in its ever best use-in a crescendo of rising staccato that leaves the poet and its lovers in an exchange of fulfillment striking the cord of the heart into an orgasmic climax that homes the being into the soul.

From the first exercise of one trying to word to oneself or other selves, some structure of finely written poems riddled on paper, to the point where the personae or reader’s innermost cavity is filled and the exterior body overflows with interpretative high spirit, chant sails salient to the meaning of poetry which enfolds the whole conundrum of life.

In contemporary literature, poets in tameless adventure have seek mediums, not just to make poetry more relevant and alive but to bridge the TEXT to the WORD. Chant eventually aroused as the most efficient and strongest tool adopted by the priestess of poetry who led the search. To relate this is to fore mostly understand the basic of chant.

Chant is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sound often primarily on one or two pitches called reciting tones. it may range from a single melody involving a limited set of notes to a highly set of complex musical structures, often included a great deal of repetition of musical subphrases. Chants functions as a heightened or stylized form of speech which though exist as a genre of its own yet allies with the priestess to render, perform and execute a poem.

The priestess is that devotee poet in the shrine of poetry who is most passionate and liberal in the practice of poetry. To read a poem goes beyond the mere silent stiff absorption of the lines as text, to the lowest motion and loudest recitation celebrated in chant. It is this act that makes poetry more ritual to the self.

There exist several means and routes to approach poetry, such as writing, reading, listening,reciting, etc but to enter the altar of poetry where the priestess dwells, you must leave behind your media and gadget, to enjoy the secret powers inhabited in the realm of this veneration which is an open home to all and sundry.

When a devotee recites a poem, chant heightens the notes of mood, fires the tone, repeating the lines then drags the being(s) to where you confront your very thoughts BARED. Leaving you before yourself is the best resolution any fellow poet or seeker can derive when you read a poem.

Chanting does not change or cheapen the form of your poem, best seller or award(s)-winning poetry collections, instead it exhumes life from the dumb gawking words, rendering it, a priceless performance which creates an unusual symphony of stress, style, and state to the original form that in no little measure helps to bring a better understanding of the meaning chased by the poet and the poem itself.

No wonder when chanting a poem line, getting caught in the rhyme and rhythm, one begins to tail the beat before the long , gesturing, fingers and hands swaying on foot tapping, while others completely internalized the process before them, are entrapped into a cocoon of themselves and can only return to themselves to seek meaning.

The priestess is a seeker who lives to proffer poetry not just as an inanimate text idol stagnated on colossal forgotten shelves for some chosen cerebral minds but as a free theatre for all who quest for purification and restoration of body, mind, and soul.

Poetry is a religion, poetry is a tradition, and those whose must follow, should worship in chant and spirit.


Uche Uwadinachi(c) 2009


More info on this article,CLICK HERE

coming up!!!

why do i chant poetry?

Find out in the next article
"The power of chanting to the priestess of poetry"

WHEN

BY UCHE UWADINACHI



I listened
To hear aches
Beating within
The enclave of your heart,
In yearn, i wait but do not see
You close to me

A bleed stood in place of your face
...speeches were calm in a mood
That sickened my very eyes
with numerous tears from the torn sky...

Fall
Fall
Falling

Am cold...
Unable to hold
Your absent fold

Untie me
From the cloth of your pain

I wait in between the stream

Hoping to live again in your warmth.

Education, Math Made Easy

Here in full force are the published articles that Joe has written on a broad array of topics. Focused primarily in mathematics, these articles wil take you on a journey through basic math, like learning the multiplication table, to some more advanced realms, like abstract algebra. Included here as well is a collection of articles touching on some everyday topics as well as some Christian themes. Come back often to find new ones as they are published by Joe. For more information on how to sign up for free and get your wonderful guide Click Here!

Thought of the week

BY A.E.HOUSMAN



Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

WHAT WE SEE

UCHE UWADINACHI






To secure today
In the manifesto of tomorrow,
Is to abandon
The chronicle of the past
In the anthem of mouths
And the warnings of the present
In the salute of hands.

Thought of the week

BY CHARLES SIMIC


'poetry is an orphan of silence.The words never quite equal the experience behind them.'

The motherless past

BY UCHE UWADINACHI


The past suffers contempt
As a wandering orphan
None dares to dear
An unfamiliar wretchedness
But these many mothers
Would foster the present
With ceaseless breast suck
Like their virgin baby
Graced with a golden fur.

Taste of poetry

BY UCHE UWADINACHI




To read a poem is to taste a poem. Like a hot chunk of bean ball within the upper tongue and soft palate, you can’t immediately swallow it instead you gently crunch, licking it spice with your saliva until the very taste is squeezed out for utmost satisfaction.

Poetry brokers no fast reading like is done to a newspapers, newsletters, magazines and some other piece of official documents where you read ,hurrying to get to the end of the story for the basic information or resolution-thereby swallowing the whole content without waiting to taste the words, the context, and it concurrent relationship with the other unit of words. And the result comes out against consummation, what has been achieved is mere consumption, a bowel movement without any meaning gained therein for the whole body and the life so lived.

The sound, shape and arrangement of the words are of essence to a poetic piece as much as the message. Infact, the appeal commences from the eyes, to every other organs: the ear, nose, mouth, tongue, and the ear, all alert, alive and aloud to enable the maximum derivation of the best. The brain, coordinating all these senses, the heart pulsing beat to match the rhythm of the poem. The failing of any of these attributes is a minus to doing justice to the poem.

To learn to savour a poem, one has to realize that poetry is concrete and sensitive. Reading a poem is to first realize it a physical object though in An Abstract medium by which ideas conveyed. A piece of poem whether short or long, possesses a presence which is equivalent to a material existence, just like a standing sculpture, a painting or even a meal of tasty barbecue.

TASTE is an internalized self receptor which is felt in the bud-deep down inside of the individual, which is when a poem can begin to communicate. So even when one listens to the poem read by another person, it is still not adequately felt because taste differs in tongues. It is pertinent that you read it to yourself-by yourself, aloud or at least mouthed to oneself.

To read a poem is to taste a poem. When you feel a poem, you have succeeded in creating your own sound of the perception of the words you speak. Your mouth is the taste bud of poetry and not your flipping eyes. Thus a rich poem is a rich tongue.

A WORLD WITHOUT WORRIES

BY UCHE UWADINACHI

(EXTRACT FROM 'SCAR in the HEART of pain')





A world without worries!
Where...how come?
Only man without feet
Feels not the torrid earth
Or child without nostril
Breathe not the toxic air.

The world...a war
Between the needy and needs
In the cage ring of life
The mad fight-a thought
Arming the hoe with stone
Against drought
The battle is lost!

A world of words
Porridge of hopeful phrases
In several dishes of religion
Their sweetness cures no hunger
Only an after-earth nutrient
Forsakes us in a world of famine.

To Fidel Castro @ 83

To Fidel Castro @ 83 (Free verse)
by AJ.Daggatolar





I

Fighting
Insidiously for the
Dictate of
Equality and
Liberty

II

Fidel,
For a new generation
Let me ask
What is the breeding creed for change
In an age
Where revolution is no more textual
Than a visual means for the mind
To seek new ways
T o the same old game of gambling
For more earnings in one’s own individual pocket?

Fidel
How is it that the Revolution
Can only be a question
Of skin deep or light
To have one who wears
The colour of an X-slave
Calling the shots in the master house

Will the stars now sprinkle less heat
And allow Cuban sugar to freely trade
Or would Miami now go less busy
On accounts of citizens with dual nationality
Who party in wait for your death
How they think everything is you
Even with Raul now in the saddle.

III

Life remains ever accidental
Cannot your type being anew
Is it that life has become a prisoner
Of dialectics unlocked
To service
Only outside history

50 years on
The rest of us are late comers
Conditions are changing
But not in the colour of blood
To undeny Darwin
In recognition of the human will
To live in want
How can these be a new rule to live by

Fidel…
The friends from Miami
Backed by the full weight of the US machine
Dole out doses of daily
Dozens of sabotage snatched
Down to distort the revolution
Every direction

The raids, the Escapades
Of canoes load of human cargoes
To such the sparks of the stars
For a new life ashore
Only to woo family members
With the luring scent of Dollarbills
To hook more innocent Cubans
To embrace the creed
Of unequal existence

For some others and the rest of us
We can go to Hell
Without a thought
Of how Capital comes about
In their new theory of boom
Only for the meltdown
To rush them back to study
The dumped and so called outdated
Pages of Marx -
“Capitalism is doomed to
a cyclic crises”

The cup is not passing OVER
The poor cannot go on
Being with us
The Revolution must be made
Try, they cannot unwrite HAVANA..1959
Even with their pigs at our Bay
We marched on in advance
Awaiting the Revolution
In other land to come to the aid of Cuba



IV

To the scarcity of want in abundance
From the abundance of want
How do we reach the new frontiers
And abode there permanently
If we don’t enrich our mind anew

Power alone can not
How many have come and gone
Trodding the same path
And every new time
Behind the back
And against the Bolshevism of 1917

Revolution suffered isolation
Only to have Stalin hack
For us all a new doctrine
‘Socialism in one country’
The guns in an upswing
Momentarily fed all full
The victory of a state of our own
Made all sacrifice possible
Against even the worst of odds
Illusion mounted a castle
The future was appropriated
Forever in the present

A caste freed from the
Burden of making a Revolution
Can only in turn enemy in practice
All serious attempt
In china, Germany, Spain
The list is endless
All through 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s
To authenticate their
Self preservationist theory
-‘We shall not rock any Other Boat
and just let us be in Moscow’
This philosophy gave Chang Kai-shek
Kuomintang the go ahead
April 12 1927 to commence
Shanghai massacre of workers

This is the making of Mao
The armed man
Against the classic read
Of workers’ resurrection
Drowned in blood
And from there down
It is being down down
Revolution it seems
Is only possible by the armed man
What other testimony
China 1949

V

Fidel…
What did you and others
Risk life and all for
For power and office
Can anyone be blind to the reforms
But Che hops on
To Congo, Algeria, Bolivia
In exploit of the armed man theory
And today his face is a brand
On shirts and tennis shoes
Worn by boys and girls alike
In the neo-colonial world
Who cannot spell Revolution
Even in their own lost mother tongue

50 years on…
Tell us
The world is still wrong
Where did we go wrong
The Revolution
Were we wrong in making it
Against the Blueprints of Marx
And the letters of Lenin
Or is it in the failure
Of others following
Our example against the Democracy
Of Workers

At 83 celebrating
Fidel’s life
The least to learn
Is the consistence of Capital
Unfailing to Dog US down
In boom or crisis
We betray the Revolution
If we turn only
Into ourselves

a bossom

FROM WWW.POETRYCRAZE.COM
CONTEST WINNER AWARD POEM
BY UCHE UWADINACHI





Behind that gold crested chamber
Rest your serene unleavened divinity
A risen old creed of your last feast
-living word that breeds men

I asked...
Could there be a faith
More gray,genetic and
Alive as this sacrament?

Your enclosed flame;
Burns of wax and incense
Flickers a steady light
Unmoved by protesting breeze
I heared,
You are the iris of the tebernacle
No wonder your closed lid
Signs a mediating semester:

Sick souls kneel
Mumbling lips, Motioned faces...
Stringed beeds dangle
In several strands
Devotion...so amazing

Ooh!mysteries of the altar
Such wholesome grace
You dispense without cost

Do allow me
A whole day in your bossom
"and surely"
Yesterday shall pass over me.




For more detail on this winning poem, CLICK HERE

Walls of unending scars

Extract from the book
'SCAR in HEART of pain'


I

I have seen
The four walls
Coated with gory handprints
Of criminals and suspects
Inscripting awkwardness
Pleading for a public presentation

I stared at slogans
Screaming….
“we die…innocent”
“i was here”
“and so what”
“are you the president?”
“dem go fire me”
“na today”
“…save us”

My heart tears my eyes
And the graffiti spawns
Ceaselessly…

My head smothers
As ravaging foul odour
Of urine and shit
Shutters me to worship
At the walls of unending scars
With my own “craze-words”.




II

Hell is cell!
The black bowl
Smiths into a black hole
Bloats for the unborn convict
Guilty – of life, wanting to survive
…raiding flames at night
…beaming red in flight
...yellow coal for ice
Collies for the burning
Of our already hurt hearts.

“Pollease”…police
Poll for faults
Lease of crimes
To catch and lock our lives
Into the bloating black hole
Of a cell.

And so
The walls persist
A writing cry of the weak
Dying…to die today
And died…. Tomorrow
WILL DIE NO MORE.

scar...survival of the human spirit

A REVIEW BY ANEOTE AJELUOROU (GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER)
OF THE BOOK
'SCAR in the HEART of pain'



THERE's something immensely affirmative about the hunan spirit that defies all understanding-it's the capacity to adapt to any vissitude of life.And in no other form of writting is the persevering quality of the human spirit celebrated than in the work of art. Through the ages,there abound a strand of writting devoted to the unyeilding,rugged nature of the spirit that stands solid in the face of tremendous suffering and hardship.Every clime has it own record of men and women who have gone through the most horrendous of situationns,but who ended up singing songs of praise and triump.
'SCAR in the HEART of pain' is a poetry that is narrative and desciptive as it chronicles the poet's encounter with the human spirit.Uche Uwadinachi battles a kind of terror lodged in the heart. So he sings Scar in the HEART of pain, where “The SCAR/Is a faceless parasitic burden-…. Uwadinachi is a young performance poet with promise as his poetry resonates with a life waiting to be lived.

For the poet Scar represents those heartaches in various guises that plague the human spirit, the sort of heartache that is inflicted on one man by his fellow man. It needs deep healing that can sometimes be confrontational to heal the scar. ‘Not a plastic surgery/Not a royal shroud?/Not a quick suicide/Only a confrontation/Of/YOU by US can WE/Overcome the aged scar’, which is ingrained.

The heart is the epicenter, both of the nation that needs direction and of man that is seeking for perfection and a measure of sanity in a world where life seems meaningless. So he sings ‘Scar…/Perpetual blemish/Invoking false hope in life…/I seek for the world beyond/To wrap me in its eternal darkness…/And life takes the side of death…/I am not purified… I am putrefied’ in Stigma’, There’s anguish and a wrenching of the guts in the meaninglessness of life as all probabilities end up in death and decay.

The poet’s hopelessness and the seeming redemption he funds manifest themselves in the three domains, which life for him. Life is bitter because there’s ‘curse’ placed upon it; so life finds a ‘cure’ to heal life’s many woes in man’s daily encounters. Finally, there’s a ‘curse’ to follow for life’s troubles to pass, which can only be found in nature, in being in tune with nature

The rivers flowing, the streams babbling and shady woods provide perfect serenity for man’s soul. It is here that man ought to find rest for his troubled spirit. So the poet proclaims in “The River’, The river/…in its ever flowing waves,/Faith is a continual pilgrimage of states…/…in its pure cleansing depth,/Reasons are regalia in blotches/To be washed in the stream-…The river divines a future/In the present from the future’.

Also to Oshun Osogbo he delightfully sings in ‘Osun’, ‘I bath in this stream/Free from stagnant stain…/All I see is crystalline bowl/Sinless…lenient/Unsoiled to any earth tie/Flowing generously for all/Inviting us to thread/New earth in water/Where our pains/Will be pacified and/Taken away.’

Clearly, Uwadinachi is a poet for the future. His imagery flows in a streamlet and it leaves no one in doubt as to his power to thrill in an expressive way that is pleasing. Uwadinachi’s handling of his subject also shows maturity. He is an emerging poet set for the future.

FROM BLACKART

AJ.DAGGA TOLAR INTRODUCES THE POETRY COLLECTION

“SCAR IN THE HEART OF PAIN"

BY UCHE UWADINACHI

This collection of poem is a chain thread that is caused into being by a curse that cuts itself only from a course in search of a cure aimed at purifying the individual from an assumed eternal scar that combines with life to combat against existence.

Existence itself becomes a curse, the living is condemned to a cyclic life of quest for the basic needs of existence. this quest for the means of life, is so life consuming, that only very few can then approach their mind to the question of the meaning of life in a world where life is lived on ones knees and the quest for the meaning why, is in the common consciouness of all, seen to be an aberration.

The common consciouness is therefore seen to be one in order with a life without meaning ... without concern for this present drift by all into Abyss. It is this unhealthy condition that feeds this new collection with poems titled SCAR-IN-THE HEART OF PAIN, by Uche Uwadinachi with an unsettling staccatotic rythm that is in itself a struggle against the pain in the heart of the poet, a consequence of the internalisation by the poet of our collective burden - the very curse that is symbolically characterised as the scar. the very same scar that then chooses to take residence in the depth of our life of unexistence.

What path then must society trod, to free its minds and heart from the pangs of the continued descent into the abyss of unexistence? Is this a task for an individual in a society plagued by a lust for the individual, so arranged to predetermine a failure in this race of life against all the stigmas that recruits even the self to enemy the self? and yet the option of the collective is ruled out, when the poet’s thinking and thoughts is one mind against the common consciouness....

Uche Uwadinachi, only answer to the above delima is a return to the course, we cannot find a cure, from the scar we all want to run distance away from. If we remain unable to harvest the strength of our togetherness into one single mindful course - as the River very well examplifies...

To Read these poems at a single stretch commends itself on us to take a second read, to the poet itself on us to take a second read, to hear the poet performs the poems, draws us to drink from a free flowing “...waters/where our mad pains/will be pacified and/Taken away.” (Osun - Pg 67).

Who would dare to turn down the offer to party with a poem like Osun, quoted above. When Osun in all femine shine, draws us into a cuddule with her very essence, a return into the cradle of our beginning for a new beginning. For how else can we renew life if not in a deep into the bowels of Osun. And making life a new, we renew the possibility of the chance of striking right into the heart of the scar. For only in engagement against pain, can society become renewed ....

My only charge then against Uche Uwadinach in this entire collection is his commiting of poetry to suffer pain, our own life of pain, but by so doing, we see how poetry not only enriches its own art, but as well as behold how we can and must so want to bring the reign of pain to an end.

passionpoetry

if only

Why do i fervently
Confess

your beauty?

It's passionate

It's benevolent

It's marvelous

It could have stopped

the Tsunami in Thailand;

If only you were there!

Men would hide behind you

Women...scurry to your sides

Children...climb to your arms

...and the THUNDERING sea

Could have calmed at your feet

If only
You were there!

For more feel of my passionpoetry,visit this website:

http://flames777.poetrycraze.com