Description

"This is a very compelling collection that is guaranteed to capture and sustain the attention of all consumers and connoisseurs of poetry, especially those with emotional investments in Africa. The imagery of these poems is at once vivid and deeply layered, truthfully grim and hopeful. And the social commitment of Ahiabuike's verse is exemplary; it celebrates the tastes, smells, peoples, flavors, and futures of the land of his birth without oozing the smug, hagiographical nationalism of similar literary undertakings. In Nigeria's immense promise, landscapes, peoples, cultures, aspirations, values, and in the diversity of its traditions, Ahiabuike has constructed a poetic pastiche of beauty and patriotic idealism. Powered by this rich repertoire of inspirational sources, these verses come alive as one reads them, dissolving the familiar, banal optics of lost causes and truncated dreams. In this carefully arranged collection we see a new Nigeria emerge with clarity and literary vigor. Ahiabuike's triumph is in poetically arousing and guiding our deadened senses to Africa's possibilities and to its counter-intuitive opportunities." Moses Ebe Ochonu, PhD, Vanderbilt University, Nashville Tennessee, USA