WE ARE THE POEM: A Review of the Poetry of Anthony Ndubuisi Abagha By Paschal Emeka Egerue

Anthony Ndubuisi Abagha in his new Poems published under the title We are the poem, speaks to what, for short of words, I will regard as the efficacy of God given talent. This is a man who read engineering at school but has by dint of self training, passion and hard work made himself renowned in poetry and other genre of literary work.

In this, he shares kindred spirit with other notable engineer literature giants such as T M Aluko, a late Nigerian Civil Engineer and town planner who in his life time wrote novels and short stories of profound social impact such as ‘Chief the Honorable Minister’, ‘Kinsman and foreman’s, ‘ ‘one man, one matchet’, One man, one wife’ etc. Aluko was to go ahead to win several British prizes besides very respectable reviews by the British Broadcasting Corporation. In this kindred spirit is also a person like Emmanuel Frank  Opigo, an Engineer and Director of works at Niger Delta University who is making waves with his rich volume of poems and other literally works including Masks and Faces and his latest work  Vowels in the air. In the international scene have also been notable engineer poets and novelists such as Juan Benet (civil engineer), Primo Levi(chemical engineer), Fyoder Dostoyevsky(military engineer), Stendhal(mathematician), Luis Buñuel(agricultural engineer) and others. The trajectory of Abagha has thus been long foretold in the muse that spoke to and speaks to his kindred. An engineer is an environmentalist. He tries to create an order out of our chaos. In this, he has a perpetual yawning to express himself. Abagha found this expression in poetry and admonishes all of us that in real context and in satire, we are the poem. His evocative writings compel us to always have a second look at the mirror and the society with a view to discovering the interconnectedness of issues; clean and unclean and our location in them. In doing this, Abagha gives the hint that he engages the society with the gusto of a gourmandizer. Without this kind of momentum, it becomes difficult to see the unseen and hear the still voices with which muse beckons at unusual times. In the absence of this momentum, we will continue to live our lives oblivious of the fact that we are the poem and that we write and act poetry every day; defining as it were, our society in ways as animated by muse. Abagha therefore in this his latest work – We are the poem decided to emphatically and unequivocally tell us who we are. This 103 page book published by Wizkid is an enchanting magnum opus  that speaks to the fact of our daily lives,  which we live in self abnegation as we watch and cheer the episodic dances of death by our leaders, intent to rob in the stagnation, ruination, deprivation, starvation and general malversation they foist on us.

Thus, all the poems in this new collection  We are the poem, speak to actual situations. The dramatis personae are easy to know. They can also easily connect themselves to the poems and either get to cry or laugh at our collective chicanery. We are the Poem is in three parts;

The first poem of the book, Songs and dance steps depicts the macabre developments in the polity where chilvary and lasciviousness in open display of impudence take the center stage in our polity and governance. Indeed as the poem surmised, “Madden, we may sing like street urchins, often bursting into a circuitous voodoo dance and song of total mayhem” which unfortunately we ” the people have continued to revel in”. In Duty beyond his keen, the poet reminds that this circuitous voodoo dance goes beyond the present era in our country. Our polity remains largely marred by deception. This is why a Ho-ha messiah who we all hailed in his first and second coming to governance, ended up an unmitigated disaster that kept us wailing at the ruins of the nation he destroyed. The Poet’s lamentation continues in Baboons Now Anaemic. In this poem, he touched on the paradoxes and collective amnesia that made all of us watch as a spineless President whose mantra was that his ambition is not worth a citizen’s blood got supplanted by a Ho-ha marauder. By this, this spineless President became an accomplice in the spilling and soaking of our blood through the insecurities that trailed the reign of the Ho-ha marauder. The apt question is thus asked by the Poet, “is blood shedding, indeed, not kind by kind, style and magnitude may differ we know, should leaders keep mum amidst oppression?.

While part one is the foreground, part two The bewildering echoes of pain reminds us of the agony of the recent past; the cashless imbroglio, the naira redesign debacle and the starvation that followed. Abagha most aptly depicted our leaders in this circumstance as doing  ‘circuitous amnesiac dance of dementia’ which dehumanized and almost asphyxiated all of us. For this, Abagha pointedly asks if our traducers know that there is no pound of flesh without a spill of blood. How will they even know in their sadistic garb and outlook?.  It is thus entirely for us the poem to resolve never to yield again to the robbing of our joyful inheritance. In part three of the book, the poet transcends the bewildering echoes of pain  and ascends to the spiritual and highly philosophical domain of potpourri of echoes. In this domain, the poet went into psychic, sobering invocations that somewhat threw up its own contradictory state of ecstacy.

Thus from  thinking deeply and asking if birds prune for ever, Abagha saw the poetry in the undulating buttocks on Okada and the innocent mini girl that beckons in a seductive ambience as he, the poet gazes at the rain , the scorching sun aftermath and the unfolding moon that allows an introspective retort on mother’s potent malaria remedy. Anthony Abagha comes out in this anthology as a fantastic scholar. You will never realize that we all are the poem until you read this Anthony Abagha’s great work of art. Indeed as Abagha puts it, we are the milling millions of poor poets, uncountable like stars above, searching for our humanity stowed away by masked men. These masked men are the marauders in power dancing away in their ‘circuitous amnesiac dance of dementia’ and holding the state as their captured trophy. 

Congratulations Chief Anthony Ndubuisi Abagha, our poet laureate for these lovely and lively poems. I look forward to the many prizes this fantastic work will win in the months ahead.

 Paschal Emeka Egerue , Lagos, Nigeria.

 20/8/24.