RBC Celebrates World Poetry Day

On March 21st, the Rainbow Book Club joined the rest of the  world to celebrate the World Poetry day. The event held at the poolside of Le Meridien, Ogeyi Place, Port Harcourt and featured a discussion of Mr Ogbonge Poliktisan an anthology of poems in pidgin English by Chief  Anthony Abagha. 

            

Dr A. Abagha, an Engineer by training described himself as a teacher and politician who branched into literature when an interesting literature teacher in secondary school.           

            

The evening was a blend of poetry, jazz and games with poets-- like Dr Obari Gomba, senior lecturer University of Port Harcourt, Joy Esku Sec. PEN and Treasurer ANA (Rivers State Chapters), Annah Dornubari and  budding poets like Tokoneh Kalango --thrilling the audience with their poetry. The event also had representatives from British Council, members of the press and The University of Port Harcourt community.

Another highlight of the evening was the presentation ‘Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014, our City, our Project’ by Mrs Koko Kalango, Founder of the Rainbow Book Club. In her address, she explained that the World Book Capital was an initiative by UNESCO where a city is designated on the account of the quality of their programmes to encourage books, to represent the world as “Book Capital” for one year. Rainbow Book Club put in a bid for Port Harcourt and beat cities like Oxford to win the title for next year. She called on everyone to get involved with the Port Harcourt World Book Capital programmes as there would be events for different groups of people; schools, individuals, communities, organisations, etc. She concluded by saying that 2014 will be a year of learning, reading, fun and promoting Nigeria and Africa through books. 

While this celebration of poetry and literature was going on in Port Harcourt, news came in, that miles away in America, one of Nigeria’s greatest literary exports, Prof. Chinua Achebe had died. Achebe was an honorary member of the Rainbow Book Club.

The Reading ended with the announcement of date for next month’s event,  Friday April 26th, and in honour of the late Achebe, the RBC Book of the month for April will be Things Fall Apart.   

--Report was written by Daniella Menezor and Maxwell Masi, Rainbow Book Club