Maverick author, producer, and filmmaker, Onyeka Nwelue and prolific poet and writer, Ikenna Chinedu Okeh,
teamed up to write the children's book titled 'Saving Mungo Park'.

The book which subverts the colonial idea that Mungo Park discovered River Niger, stirs up questions in the minds of the young by teasing possibilities that it was Africans who retrieved Mungo Park from a river that displaced him. The children's book is published by Hattus Books, an imprint of Blues and Hills Pictures LTD in collaboration with Baron's Cafe (Aramide and Baron's Cafe are imprints of Fairchild Media) in March 2021.

Ikenna Chinedu Okeh, the co-author of Saving Mungo Park wrote in the introductory note of the book noted that
'In writing 'Saving Mungo Park', we intend to tell the story of Mungo Park's encounter with the famous River Niger, and his relationship with the native communities around the famous river.

'In this book, we approached this historical subject with a fresh perspective that's rather traditionally ignored, perhaps as a matter of convenience.'

Femi Morgan, founder, and advisor at Fairchild Media noted that the book brings to the fore playful reverse aggression to the colonial Mungo Park narrative. The book reflects Mungo Park's weakness while engaging the civilization and prowess of Africans who live and make social and cultural meaning along the River Niger. It stretches the imagination of the child whose inquisitiveness is stirred by the myriad possibilities of storytelling. These two authors attempt to spark the mind of the African child to the politics of colonial history which have been crammed into textbooks.

Ikenna Chinedu Okeh and Onyeka Nwelue were born in Ezeoke Nsu in Imo State, Nigeria and both went to Mount Olives Seminary in Umuuezeala Nsu.

Ikenna Chinedu Okeh is the author of six collections of poetry and a crime novel--The Operative. His narrative poems, 'a Tale of Twist', and 'An Eye of an Isle' have caught the critical eyes of lovers of The Illiad.

He is also the author of children's books, 'When Everyone Sings' and 'The Man who Thought Little of Himself'.He also writes music reviews for UbuntuFM, a platform he co-founded to promote and engage music across the globe. Okeh is also the co-founder of Educate One Child Foundation, an organisation dedicated
to making books available to children in African communities. www.educateonechild.org. He lives in Turkey.

Onyeka Nwelue is the author of three novels, The Abyssinian Boy, The Beginning of Everything Colorful, and The Strangers of Braamfontein. He is also the author of The Lagos Cuban Club, a collection of poetry.
Onyeka has also come full circle as an artist as he has also produced non-fiction work, essays, articles, poetry, documentaries, films, a musical play, broad and encapsulating interviews, music projects while involving himself in social and cultural commentaries on a national and global scale. He backpacks delicately around the world.

[url]
https://baronscafe.com/product/saving-mungo-park/[/url]

Popular Unorthodoxy
A review of Abubakar Sidi’s Poet of Dust
By Kelvin Kellman


Poet of Sand
Published by Konya Shamshrumi
Pages 69
Year: 2017


The first thing that strikes you once voyaging between the pages is the peculiar unorthodoxy, in both language and structure, employed to birth the book. Another striking feature is the fascination with old masters, particularly of the Persian and Arab sorts, which perhaps informs the grain of unorthodoxy that the book bears: A poet of this time—as the term “new poet” doesn’t exactly capture the meat in describing Sidi because he’s been on the block—echoing the spirit of old masters in his verse. And within that unorthodoxy is the tendency for the crass and the unhinged. How crass, and unhinged, and unorthodox, can the title of a poem be further than: “Poetry in the Republic of Love or A Goddamn Poem about Goddamn things & Similes Vomited by a Motherfucking Goddamn Bard”?—a title which quickly brought to my mind Omotara James’ poem title: “GenderMotherFucker”.

The truth, or my truth, or the truth as I perceive it, is that: Sidi is a lunatic. And like all poets reaching for peace, order, and other elements of noble aspirations in our collective humanity, Sidi’s lunacy, though poetic, is in both the character of his wordings and his message. How else does one in one breath allude to Arabic (Koranic) piety, and in another, openly embrace the stark exhibition of pornographic imagery? Page 60 says: “goddess, as i let go the strap of your bra & let my tongue / examine the dark areola of your nipple, as you moan & / cry: bite me! Bite me hard!”

Like most poet, Sidi in a rather quaint swagger of ambition also attempts the unreachable; to define poetry. He also attempts to define who is and what a poet represents, albeit, like everyone before him, futilely. He goes on and on about this:

A poet is nothing but a universal ambassador of love
A poet dreams through wakefulness.
A poet is a craze-man of the stars / A poet is the grand lunatic of hell (tempting one to wonder if this line is confessional)
A poet is a talking book, the only surviving copy / All others have gone extinct.
A poet is he that hears the disturbing / claptrap of dumb demons arguing in his own mind.

It is not difficult to see why he stopped, having exhausted metaphors to describe the person who embodies the nuanced art of poetry. On the last page of “Deuteronomy or Book of Dust”, the author launches into a voice, quite familiar voice when he undertook the task of explaining (defining?) what poetry is, that for a second, I was almost transported into the wonderment of my reading hours of Ben Okri’s prose.
On the downside however, at some point in his ambition, the poet gets carried away with his almost morbid fascination (or eulogizing?) of the Al ar shad in the poem, “Testament of Sand”, that at some point I was near confused about the person of the character because of the sweeping sketches of its description and being—at one point a poet that inspires Sidi, at another, God himself (31).
Further reading unveils Sidi continuing with the very same unrestrained inquisition and exposition of same character. First was AL ar shad, and then within the exposition of Al ar shad was the infernal longing to unravel Jim. And in “Deuteronomy or Book of Dust” we are again confronted with the same self-possessed exposition of this Al ar shad character.

Sidi was magnificent with some take-aways. The best for me being:
DARWISH led me through the absence of presence
Good poetry… is a chick / A voluptuous curvy, sexy chick, with protruding breasts / Heavy backside,an enormous clit / And a never ending quest to go more and more
… Sadness is the most difficult manifestation of love and the / Hardest to bear

The stylistic gain of Sidi’s debut is his ability to draw from different sources (even though with a bias for the Arab and the Persian) and climate of cultures: the Arab, the Persian, Yoruba, and even the Greek. But this strength reveals one crucial limiting reagent—that there was nearly nothing in imagery of Sidi’s local ethnicity. I searched hard for a Hausa, Fulani, or any imagery for that matter that might suggest or point to his ethnicity, and I came up with (nearly) nothing. That notwithstanding, can be overlooked, because of the colossal Arab influence on his part of ethnicity/belonging and consequently identity.

Following the success of “The Poet of Sand”—the author’s critically acclaimed chapbook— “Poet of Dust” is a handsome debut that establishes Sidi as a household name. This collection, asides its merit in its unorthodox use of language / structure, also reveals that the author is crucially well-read (with a wholesome fetish for Adonis), and grounded in his art enough to combat the amoebic form of art, that is poetry. One can only be anticipative that his next book will follow in excellence, as this followed “The Poet of Sand”.

Kelvin Kellman is a writer, poet and editor. He lives in Ibadan

Review was first published in Syncityng

I am interested. 08068108018

Abubakar Sidi's Poet of Dust

The highly acclaimed book of Abubakar Sidi, The Poet of Dust was first published in its incubatory stages as a digital chapbook. It is now a full collection of maverick poems.

Syncity NG, a leading culture media recently reviewed the book, thus;

The first thing that strikes you once voyaging between the pages is the peculiar unorthodoxy, in both language and structure, employed to birth the book. Another striking feature is the fascination with old masters, particularly of the Persian and Arab sorts, which perhaps informs the grain of unorthodoxy that the book bears: A poet of this time—as the term “new poet” doesn’t exactly capture the meat in describing Sidi because he’s been on the block—echoing the spirit of old masters in his verse. And within that unorthodoxy is the tendency for the crass and the unhinged. How crass, and unhinged, and unorthodox, can the title of a poem be further than: Poetry in the Republic of Love or A Goddamn Poem about Goddamn things & Similes Vomited by a Motherfucking Goddamn Bard? —a title which quickly brought to my mind Omotara James’ poem title: “GenderMotherFucker”. The truth, or my truth, or the truth as I perceive it, is that: Sidi is a lunatic. And like all poets reaching for peace, order, and other elements of noble aspirations in our collective humanity, Sidi’s lunacy, though poetic, is in both the character of his wordings and his message. How else does one in one breath allude to Arabic (Koranic) piety, and in another, openly embrace the stark exhibition of pornographic imagery?

Recently, Fairchild hosted Abubakar to a conversation and book reading event at Patabah Bookstore, Surulere.

read the rest of the review here:
https:///2UU9gGu

Call or whatsapp for Purchase: 08068108018

REZthaPoet's Beautiful One is on Okadabooks.com for FREE

REZthaPoet drops love chapbook Beautiful One
REZthaPoet, a Spoken Word artist, has released his poetry chapbook, titled Beautiful One. The chapbook central theme is love shows to the reader the many sides of the poet-persona. The poems reflects interconnected life experiences and engages the idea of identity and culture with, a sensual motif, which gives it a modern texture. This chapbook was published by Beige and Crow, a publishing and content consulting organisation.

The Chapbook downloadable for free on Okadabooks.

The introductory brief of the work noted thus:
Balancing love and sex is a tightrope REZthapoet attempts in this collection but between the migraine of heartbreak and the surge of emotions, he crafts a fluid metaphor and memory, making sex a vehicle for many other themes. Sex simply becomes a backdrop or a pleasant gaze accompanying a musical sequence of philosophy.

“REZthaPoet work, Beautiful One, is a profound contribution because it engages the subject of the heart with a certain mature journeying instead of the expected ballad of teasing eros. In this chapbook, the temperament of a loverboy meeting the philosopher is a rich performance”.

Born Adebola Afolabi Business Consultant, Poet, Poetographer and Spoken word artist.
REZthaPoet delves into different cultural and artistic shifts by using the spoken word poetry genre to educate, engage and entertain a growing and displaced middle class. His work, Exposit (2015) also embodies a beautiful hybrid of language, traditional folklore, transatlantic artistic developments and an accessible poetic content. He has graced several stages in Nigeria and across Africa for over eleven years. He has also worked on collaborative art projects with visual artists and music artists.

He performed at A Local Act for Peace, a one-day cause festival championing peace in the world. The event showcased artists and artistes in the UK, US and Nigeria was simultaneously beamed across three locations; Stockholm, New York, Lagos. He also performed in major culture events such as the Lagos International Poetry Festival, the Lagos Books and Arts Festival, and Artmosphere Lagos. He has been a panellist, guest and performer at the Lagos International Poetry festival (LIPFEST), Lagos Biennial Festival (with outSPOKEN), Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF).

The Exposit Spokenword album and poems can be found on www.iamrezthapoet.com

Download on Okadabooks

https://okadabooks.com/book/about/beautiful_one__adult_only_18/17520

https://www.nairaland.com/4350642/rezthapoet-drops-love-chapbook-beautiful#65101736

REZthaPoet, a Spoken Word artist, has released his poetry chapbook, titled "Beautiful One". The chapbook's central theme is love. The book shows to the reader the many sides of the poet-persona. The poems reflect the interconnected life experiences and engage the idea of identity and culture with, a sensual motif, which gives it a modern texture. This chapbook was published by Beige and Crow, a publishing and content consulting organisation.

The Chapbook downloadable for free on http://iamrezthapoet.com/beautiful-one/

The introductory brief of the work noted thus:

‘’Balancing love and sex is a tightrope REZthapoet attempts in this collection but between the migraine of heartbreak and the surge of emotions, he crafts a fluid metaphor and memory, making sex a vehicle for many other themes. Sex simply becomes a backdrop or a pleasant gaze accompanying a musical sequence of philosophy”.

“REZthaPoet work, ‘Beautiful One’, is a profound contribution because it engages the subject of the heart with a certain mature ‘journeying’ instead of the expected ballad of teasing eros. In this chapbook, the temperament of a loverboy meeting the philosopher is a rich performance”.

Born Adebola Afolabi – Business Consultant, Poet, Poetographer and Spoken word artist.
REZthaPoet delves into different cultural and artistic shifts by using the spoken word poetry genre to educate, engage and entertain a growing and displaced middle class. His work, Exposit (2015) also embodies a beautiful hybrid of language, traditional folklore, transatlantic artistic developments and an accessible poetic content. He has graced several stages in Nigeria and across Africa for over eleven years. He has also worked on collaborative art projects with visual artists and music artists.

He performed at A Local Act for Peace, a one-day cause festival championing peace in the world. The event showcased artists and artistes in the UK, US and Nigeria was simultaneously beamed across three locations; Stockholm, New York, Lagos. He also performed in major culture events such as the Lagos International Poetry Festival, the Lagos Books and Arts Festival, and Artmosphere Lagos. He has been a panellist, guest and performer at the Lagos International Poetry festival (LIPFEST), Lagos Biennial Festival (with outSPOKEN), Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF).

The Exposit Spokenword album and poems can be found on www.iamrezthapoet.com

I am interested. I am a well known and regarded editor and publisher in the country. I reside in Lagos.

Contact: 08181880536