In essence, you are just like the children playing, oblivious of the uncertainties of life; you are like the lawyer filled with angst over what the judge’s ruling will be on his case; you are like the beggar on the street, unsure of the source of his next meal; you are like the teacher pondering over the best methods to teach his students.
Despite the coldness, I feel inspired to travel to the polar regions to create words of silences, of darkness during the polar nights. I wish my words to touch the extremities and the absoluteness of being.
The heart of a poet is wild and free and even if he lives in Africa or Europe or in the desert and savannah belt, the compass grows fingers to point at every angle at the same time because what we know to be time is only a flirting naked woman or raised muscles of a man through ink and dreams.
Let me say this: writing a poem somehow saves me. In the sense that, an animal of experience has been let out its cage, has been given freedom: an experience has left me so it loses the power to taunt me. In giving my experience the luxury of language, I have freed it and in turn freed myself. For instance, writing about my depression has greatly helped me cope with it.
The Gathering is a short but very good work of many to come, initiating that only when we gather, we move forward and make the world better.
KSR Collective member, Richard Ali, hosted the fourth #SoapboxSession in Abuja yesterday. His guest was city poet, novelist and public communications expert, Michaela Moye.