Emmanuel Okoh: My GCLF Experience

Emmanuel Uweru Okoh's works have been published in NEXT, Saraba magazine, Sentinel Nigeria, Naijastories.com, ITCH magazine and Mad Hatters’ Review of Iceland. Emmanuel lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria. His poetry collection, Gardens and Caves, will be published by SunBird Books, November 2012. Emmanuel was at the Garden City Literary Festival, 2012; he writes about his experience. 

My second application to be a part of the Garden City Literary Festival, a gathering of book heads and the likes in its fifth year clicked. I got an email first. I was excited, but still wasn't sure. So, I took the first step towards being sure by sending a confirmation SMS as requested by the organizers. And on the 14th of October, I made my trip to Port Harcourt. 

The literary festival which took place between 15th and 20th October 2012, at the Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt held a creative array of events: exhibitions, seminars, book readings, essay competitions, a Jazz/Poetry evening and a writers’ workshop. 

I was in the poetry workshop class.  Ours was a gathering of green and published poets with Dr. Obari Gomba as the facilitator, an interesting and fine man who at the first poetry class opened our eyes to some new ways to approach poetry. Lessons were woven around the special nature of poetry and how as writers, we must abide by some ground rules to achieve a masterpiece each time we set to write a poem.

He likened the ground rules to the 30 commandments of poetry. Ours was a practical one, and at the end of the class we wrote our first poems for the workshop which we exchanged among ourselves for improvement. 

Our next class was on imagery through sight, touch and smell. We engaged in writing short lines that reflected strong imagery, for this played a major role in good poetry. Closing the day, we had a task of producing two poems on any subject. So I went to work; my laptop and I. No noise. It was my usual romance with solitude that bore the poems that I have published for my reading audience so far.

Here is a poem for the workshop:

SARO WIWA’S CALL (for Ken Saro Wiwa)

My keen cry to Kenule:

 I, Fubara, of torn fishnet and gaping boat,

Of gasping fish and de-flowered flowers.

I sit on a lonely log; one of the few remaining.

I write on a Dutchman’s Dollar paper

It left the howling helicopter 

Black crude; my ink, my thin thighs; my table

Hear my call Kenule, for your ears know truth. 

Your ink bullets still hover in mid-mission,

Taking rests on shrunken leaves and greased waters

Cruel antics of the goggled General regenerates

 In bloody resonance- Where lies our hope?

We await the revolution of fish and oysters

From long years of petrol-logged breath

And bone splinters from Shell’s shell.  

Let the cry of prawns aid my call to you, Kenule

Caked soot sit on my nasal paths. 

I breathe with my ears; ears saturated with news of

Inverted justice, of blood soaked loot I loathe. 

Hear these words Kenule. And berth those 

Ink bullets of fourth estate fame and stencil 

Romance. That short romance of eternal frenzy

That die not from ‘feeble’ minds of Generals

Nor fumes from the Dutch industrial farts.