Tribute To Nigeria's Craziest Poet

I got Ebereonwu’s anthology, The Insomniac Dragon as a gift from a friend. My friend had wanted me to see that there are Nigerian writers with real weird inclinations who employ poetry as a medium to express their zaniness. He must have burdened himself with the task of browsing through the Literature section of the University of Ibadan bookshop to fetch out that beautiful piece of unusual anthology in order to refute my claim of a dearth of such poetic content in the Nigeria literary landscape. Few days before, we had argued over the proliferation of ‘political’ and ‘African’ poems in the country. I was emphatic in my assertion that as much as I do appreciate poems with such content, that it was high time we started reading poems with real existential leanings… with a stress on an individual’s quest for meaning in life, an individual’s struggle against life’s strange tides, rebellion against the conventional etc., etc.

Sooner had I leafed through The Insomniac Dragon, than my hunger for existential poems (from Naija) was satisfied. I think Ebereonwu was something else. If death had not callously taken him away from us, it might be necessary, in the nearest future, to request for a psychiatric examination of his brain. I oftentimes find myself captured in awe of his crazy ideas and also wonder that his inspiration cannot but be from anything less than the bottle. No sane man (non-literally) could have chunked out such screwy lines untipsied. Or what shall one say of a poet who writes:



or of these poignant and depressing lines:

I

As though this were not enough, Ebereonwu sequeled The Insomniac Dragon with yet another outlandish collection so aptly titled Unpublishable Poems. If I were to offer a change of title, I would have suggested Unpalatable Poems because if poetry is meant to be savoured, the poems in this collection are definitely too tart for the tongue.

In this new collection, one either gets stunned by his personal jabs on erstwhile president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Odia Ofeimum in the “Ode To The Odd Man” or totally gets knocked away by the rather cynical poem, “SINFUL WORLD” where he writes:
 


Ebereonwu’s poems are particularly disturbing. He is daring in his ideas. They are unconventional. Pretty wonder that he writes that:



I wish I knew more about Ebereonwu’s personal life beyond what is profiled in the blurb of his books. He cannot be any less different from his poems.

Ebere! Ebere! Are you there?
Ehn?

Well,
In your demise
I found muse
            


Aloofaa (c) 

Hello Simpart,

I guess you need to reread the post. It's not meant to be a smear on Ebe's personality. It's a tribute. I enjoyed his wierdness.

Thanks anyway for your comment.

Visit my blog www.aloofaa(dot)blogspot(dot)com for my "explorations".

Great are the minds that take time to analyze the work of others because even in condemnation, another message is relayed.
Good work done,

I don't know who is more impressive, on the basis of this thread alone.

The reviewer or the reviewee

Nigeria's craiziest poet you call him? Would I think so?