S. Ola Ajimisan Sets To Add A Triplet
S. Ola Ajimisan hails from ILAJE-ETIKAN in the present day Ondo State, southwestern Nigeria. He is a versatile and quintessential contemporary African author and a factor or voice to reckon with in contemporary World Literature.
His debut FORTY TESTAMENTS FOR OUR DEAREST DRIFTING DOME was published in 2021. He recently launched another interesting book CASTLE BUILT WITH SPITTLE (2022) as a way of consolidating his nitch. A brain always at work! A hand always writing! While others see ASUU strike as a nurse, the creative impulse in him compelled him to turn the strike into a bundle of blessings. Hence, his three new books of poetry, WHERE ELSE DO WE GO FROM HERE?, SWELTERING LABYRINTH and DEAD END OF CROSSROADS, will be launched, first in soft copies, courtesy of his newly established publishing company, Royal Paraphernalia Press International Ltd. He is determined to launch the hard copies of the three books on December 31, 2022.
As a completely becharming poet, a scholar of transcendental repute, a fine gentleman and a factor to reckon with in the knowledge space, S. Ola Ajimisan is a disrupter of existing norm or what you can call a social rebel and reformist, he remains in the forefront of the agitation for a better and greater Nigeria and through his collection of poetry, he is one of the few creative erudition whose works lapoon the glorified Giant of Africa, Nigeria and the political principalities, who over the years have wrecked havoc on the economy and quality of education in Nigeria.
In addition, S. Ola Ajimisan is a scholarly trailblazer who has not merely break down barriers to climb lofty height, he obliterates them. He isn't just out to break records and set new ones, but also out for holistic impact as he smashes existing records and create new ones. No doubt, S. Ola Ajimisan shall set a new scholarly record come December 31, 2022 as he launches A Triplet. This is no means a small feat, but one deserving plausible accolades. The Literary paudit has proven he is as diligent as cerebral, and infact, has asserts his commitment to a better, more secure and peaceful world project as global thrusts run through his new 📚 of poetry.
While we await this epochal day and unveiling of S. Ola Ajimisan's Triplet, permit me to enamore you in and journey you through the finesse, and creative wizardy of the griot and literary deity's Poetilogue for each of the book in the Triplet in the subsequent paragraphs.
POETILOGUE OF WHERE ELSE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
I have continued to observe, like the legendary preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Holy Book of the Christians, that the world is breathing her swansong breathe. For this reason, the world has been flung into a flood of confusion. According to Kofi Awoonor in Song of Sorrow, "returning is not possible and going forward is a great difficulty". This apocalyptic reality has necessitated the greatest question of the century, which is the title of this collection of poetry, Where Do We Go From Here? The book is an encylopaedia of the myriad of vicissitudes that have greeted the world in the 21st century wherein people seek and crave to grow or develop at the expense of their neighbours and kindreds. The book x-rays innumerable thematic thrusts and tropes that form the quotidian creed of the world's existence. This collection contains my poetic memorialisation of and ratiocinations during the long period of ASUU strike foisted on us by the indiscriminate government that cares not about the education of the poor masses attending public universities. The government and the ruling class have acted it out to the world that they are killing PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS because their children and wards do not attend them.
The book, is therefore, not just for Nigerian readers of Literature-in-English but a library for entire "glotizens" in the business reading, appreciating and critiquing World Literatures-in-English. The poems are refined products of the poet's raw experience as a citizen of Nigeria and as a global citizen. The book is therefore, recommended as another kingpin in augmenting readership and audienceship in Global Literature-in-English. In the poet's characteristic manner, the book is a masterful exemplification of the poet's doctrinaire, creative craft and initiation into the wizardry of his Ilaje-Etikan cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems. This wizardry permeates the entire collection and makes the collection not only an immersion text in Literature-in-English but also an interdisciplinary immersion text.
POETILOGUE OF SWELTERING LABYRINTH.
Moses Adejumo (Baba Sala) once entitled one of his plays "Orun Mooru" which means the heaven is sweltering. I have observed that when Baba Sala said that the heaven was melting under the intractable influence of the fervid sun, the situation was still bearable, as against the reality currently dawning on the citizens of the world. The world and her various man-made territorialities have been knotted together into a misleading labyrinth gnashing her teeth under the tongue of the sweltering sun of neo-modernism or postmodernism and technology. Man has stiffled and ruffled the porous peace of the world by their actions and inactions. The world is now a languishing labyrinth that is as well sweltering. This collection betokens the poet's daily observations of the history of human progress and the attendant corollaries of the progress on humanity or the global ecosystem. The end of the world, as recorded by the Christian Holy Book, may be looming, sequel to man's insatiable tendency to tailor the world to kowtow to his tendentious whims and caprices. This also extends to all spheres of human existence such as war, security, religion, diplomacy and so on.
Characteristically, the poet does a poetic recollection and documentation of the interaction of man with the world in a diction laden with copious folk tradition of his Ilaje-Etikan people. Some of the poems exemplify the poet's experimentations with novel styles evolved out of rebellion against conventions. He has made his mark by foregrounding his ideological creed that styles, anywhere in the world, are deliberate glorifications of transgressions with a view of achieving innovative forms that place much poetic significance and prominence of the message above conventional inhibitions called traditions. The experiments saw the poet writing contemporary poetry with the traditional African tale Tradition so as to brood a poetic hybrid with global appeal to global readers. In each of the poems, the trado-cultural creed finds expression as a story waiting to be told in verses. Therefore, I have no skepticism in recommending the book for the continuation of poetic thoughts and discourses in World Literatures-in-English.
POETILOGUE OF DEAD END OF CROSSROADS.
In the beginning was the crossroads and the crossroads was the world, the world the crossroads. In it reside nations and tribes that till her field with tendentious recklessness to ebb her to an abrupt end through actions and inactions. End of Crossroads is the poet's encyclopaedic recollection of powerful observations, rigorous propagation and transmission of the dairy of the lifting and drifting of the world towards the crossroads of an imminent end. The collection cross-examines and dissects the vast vogue fashions, neo-global drifts and other innumerable propensities of the "glotizens" (global citizens) to fit neatly and comfortably into the limitless ocean of the 21st century at the expense of huMANity and posterity. These drifts are growing incurably wild and the wildness poses invincible threat to the denizens of the global space. The threats, if not scrupulously checked, will corrode the peace and sanity of the space with a view to finagling faith, finesse and the essence of existence from her nostrils. Guess what! An abrupt end is inevitable because the inhabitants of the space are frolicsome about the threats and the fate of the endangered and CAGED BIRD. The caged bird may sing but a song of woes because the denizens of the world no longer listen or heed the pansemiotic language that should tailor them towards the path of mutual relationship and amicable cohabitation. The collection explores an ocean of tropes and tendencies that transcends ethno-racial borderlines. These tropes and tendencies include, but not limited to banditry, racism, xenophobia, ethnic chauvinism, wars, its aftermaths, peaceful cohabitation and other forms of apostasy and heresy. This makes it a kingpin for global readership and scholarship in World Literature. Its employment of the Yoruba oral tradition as vehicle for the conveyance of the poetic thoughts and mines of his mind is as magical as a wand.
Folklore-enriched, each of the poems in the collection is a token of the poet's masterful and mesmeric orchestration of the Yoruba Folkism for the seasoning of contemporary poetry, captivating and spell-bound enough to magnetise non-Yoruba reader-critics to the book. Indeed, it is the signature of the poet's creativity and versatility. Some of the poems are experimentations with new poetic style of writing poetry like quotidian colloquial conversations with transgressive motif and rebellion against conventional norms and paradigms. They betoken paradigm shift and the poet's doctrinaire craft and hypothesis which place message transmission above doctrinal inhibitions in contemporary poetry, especially in this postmodernist age of seeking meaning in the vast wilderness of meaninglessness. The Transgressive forms are deliberately orchestrated for the purpose of evolving new poetic hybrids that can stand the test of all times and tides.
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