A Booktiful Love: A Calligraphy of Social Consciousness
Title: A Booktiful Love
Author: Tolu A Akinyemi
No. of Pages: 63
Genre: Poetry
Year of Publication: 2020
ISBN: 9781913636005
Publisher: The Roaring Lion Newcastle
Reviewer: Iliya Kambai Dennis
In a society barred by anomalies of all sorts, we are troubled by the uncertainty the future holds not just for us, but also our progenies. It is not a new thing the crisis ravaging our society, some of which are political, and social delinquencies. In a time like this, poets become the voice of those whose voices have been gagged by the precariousness of those in power, and those whom the judicial system has failed.
Here, Tolu A. Akinyemi’s A Booktiful Love is a sweet lamentation of well-written poems that takes you on a journey of self-questioning and reflection on societal ills; from the shenanigans of corrupt governments to the dereliction of matrimonial servitude. We are fed with a different type of grief. But unlike the glorified and rampant confessional poetry—that spells one’s grief—Tolu brings something fresh and timely that challenges the status quo: governance, democratic adulteration, the ineffectiveness of the judicial system, and the cancer of sectionalism and ethnicity as we see in the poem, “Twenty Twenty-Three:”
We own twenty twenty-three. It’s our shot. It’s our call
We will unleash even our underage voters
This throne belongs to us
And our son…
Here, the persona reveals how deep the claws of sectionalism have eaten our morality as a country to the extent that we don’t care about the country’s general good if our interests are met.
In “Saints” the poet showed us more clearly what the first motive of vying for public office is: Loot the treasury, /let the people starve. /Loot them dry, loot till the grounds become barren. This is the reality we live in as a country. This is our grief.
Where do we stand in all of this as a nation in the eyes of the world? Tolu answers this question in the poem “Defective:”
Our banners are held aloft with the inscription
“Defective”
We are broken pieces with chests of errors—our
Totality reeks of imperfection.
He went on to say,
Call us jigsaw puzzles—
A summation of defects,
Defects and more defects.
Because that is what we are. A defective, stigmatized, and battered people. But we don’t feel content with it as rightly shown in “It’s Okay Not to Feel Okay.” But most importantly, what is more “okay” is to weed out the debris that wrestles with our freedom.
Aside from our dysfunctional political and government system, a common trait destroying our humanity is the decadence of morality and destruction of cultural norms by the invasion of social media, as we see in “Pertinent Question,” the misplaced priority we suffer as a generation. What better way to describe negligence of national and cultural norms than the way the poet puts it:
The mundane has been glorified by this Twitter
And Instagram generation
Big Brother housemates become national
Heroes while education takes a back seat.
Is it the rampant domestic violence that leads to more broken homes as we see in “Divorce” and “Let Him Go,” the betrayal of friendship as in the “Portrait of Fake Friend,” or the hatred and gross wickedness consuming us as we see in “Say No to Xenophobia”? Even though the poet persona explores the xenophobic attacks to be peculiar—The recalcitrant child is from the Southern Hemisphere—such gross wickedness wears other forms of dress and has divided us as a continent—Mother Africa has been divided into splinters.
“Isolation,” the opening poem reminds us of what we once dealt with us as a people and how we kept our differences aside to fight a common enemy:
The waves of disruption swept us into isolation.
We stayed home in trepidation behind jarred doors…
Every new day, we grieved the dead…
The sight of mass graves
made every breath feel like a prized possession.
But while some suffered, others saw the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to loot resources: some government wrapped their arms around/flailing shoulders and protected their vulnerable/whilst others showed their true colours:/desecrate the commonwealth. He continued in the poem “Lockdown:” A raging global pandemic in my lifetime, wears the/garment of apocalypse. / Democracy has gone crazy / Freedom is on lockdown.
Tolu A. Akinyemi took complex societal issues and weaved them into simple aphoristic lines. He booktifully documented these histories for us to remember what we have fought and survived, and what is still trying to kill us.
“A Booktiful Love” is a calligraphy of social consciousness—a wake-up call to all and sundry to see how our “cruelty snuggles their bodies like fire” and has punctured the things that bind humanity.
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Iliya Kambai Dennis is a writer and poet from Kaduna State, Nigeria. His works have appeared in several online publications. He is inspired by beauty and ruins. He loves movies, books, and coffee.
