Nature and Memory in Addulmalik Mohammed’s The Orb Weaver - A Critical Review

The Orb Weaver, is a collection of thirty seven poems. The 72 pages book is the poet’s maiden edition. The poet captures different aspects of human life but two dominant themes stood out – nature and memory. The poet in the mold of William Wordsworth and the romanticists keenly understudies nature and thematises his experience of the natural environment. The poet has special attachment to spiders, birds, and their behavioural pattern. Two spiders stood out in this special observational study of the natural environment – the orb weaver and the tarantula. The poet calls our attention to the peaceful world of animals and trees. In as much as there are contentions in the natural world, a close study of the environment shows order, harmony and beauty.

In “Song Birds,” the poet observes the “canary” a bird that sings “in captive/or in wild.” The canary “knits her songs” wherever it finds itself. The canary bird is a composer of lyrics that are beautiful to the ear and refreshing the soul. The second bird the poet studies is the “humming bird” which weaves her “chattering/chirping her sonority to dawn” in the “vegetation.” The habitations of these birds also are also pointed out in the poem. The canary’s habitation is the wild and captivity, while the humming bird is the vegetation. The third stanza captures the habitation of the nightingale and the cuckoo – “the woods/the sea.” With scientific and zoological precision, the poet describes the singing patterns of other birds such as “the swans, cranes, the pelican, and the parrot.” These birds, especially the parrot has been seen as human’s friend as it “mimics” man (1-2).

The poem, “Birds” goes beyond describing the habituation, singing pattern of the birds to describing poetically the physical and flight pattern of birds. “Across the skies/they flap and flight” some birds are however; “flightless” the “ostrich” (3) is one of such birds. The poet shifted attention to the sky, to “The Barnard Star.” The star is named after E. E. Barnard an American astronomer who measured the motion of the star. The star is one of the oldest in the galaxy but still emitting light. It takes “180 years” for the star to rove “half a degree” and that is why the poet calls it “the senile Barnard star” (4). The poet moves his focus to “The Snake River,” and this river is not “the Thames/and not/The Mississippi.” In Heart of Darkness, the novelist describes European rivers in the best of words available to him but African rivers, the description was derogatory. However, the poet sees the “lapping Ukpekwu” a beautiful body of water that is attractive enough to attract his attention. The meandering nature of the river is why the writer calls it “the snake river/this daughter of nature/flapping/gorging/plunging” (5).


The poem, “The Tarantula” the tarantula is described – “like a chip of chopped wood/this spiny-bodied spider.” The tiny nature of the spider does not reduce its fierceness. The spider creates a “sticky ball” to trap her prey. The spider also “burrows as net/he digs/and to his burrows/the trap-door-spider covers:” The same spiny-bodied spider, “with Oak eyes/he sits/fierce, mountainous/as Everest be” (6-7). “The Orb Weaver (1 & 2)” further captures the fierce nature of the spider which “pounces/squeezes/as all wails” the spider creates a “trap line/this drag line/on flowers and boughs” (. Spiders, especially the orb weaver creates cobwebs which on the surface looks beautiful but that which appears to be beautiful can also be deadly. The beautiful attracts the prey while the predator lurks behind that which is beautiful to strike. The orb weaver builds “on the field/caves/and swamps/in shrubs/woods/and deserts.” The “edifice” of “webs” is not just a dwelling place but also a death-trap.

Other poems that address nature in its multidimensional perspectives include, “Star,” “Okpologidi,” “The Eguana’s Burial,” the poem captures a tradition in the Rivers where killing an eguana attracts severe punishment. This indicates that animals have their own fundamental animal right of existence. These poems adumbrate the nature and structure of the natural environment and their significance.

The collection The Orb Weaver can also be studied under the memory studies. Memory study is a means of remembering the past. Poetry is a vital storehouse of memories. The happenings that took place in the past are not merely past tense. That which happened in the past is recollected in the present as a result of a trigger. The description of poetry as ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, recollected in tranquility by William Wordsworth predicate that poetry is situated within the bounds of memory studies.’ The word ‘recollected’ is an indication that poetry is situated within the borders of experience and memory. What is experienced by an individual or a community can be captured as either individual or collective memory.

In the poem, “Obubra” the poet recollected his NYSC Camp experience. This experience so recollected could have been triggered by the poet seeing a corps member. Nevertheless, the experience happened “in 2007” (40). The “biggle” is a horn-like instrument used by the military officers to call the corps members to morning or evening assembly. The early morning is described as “this unholy time.” The boots of the soldiers on the floor, the barking of orders and threats are all captured: “if you tanda there/you are wrong” the “DRILL” and “regimented vigour” induced “sweet sweat.” It is a bitter-sweat experience as;

Memories keep records
Then
This mountain
The Ikpene
Mounts our hearts
Like millipede we mount
Seeking the end
This end
This endurance trek
Asleep now the biggle
Clamouring
This ritual (44)

Any Nigerian who went through the NYSC programme can readily identify with this experience and thus bring to mind collective memory that should have been forgotten. The last night of the programme which the poet tagged “paradise night” is the “camp fire” night where a great bonfire is activated and “spectacular drummers/and their thrilling tune/basking the air.” The poem “Obubra” is the longest of all the poems in the collection. Obubra is the location where the NYSC members camped for the three weeks programme. The poet succeeded in capturing flora and fauna of the community.

The poems, “That Daughter if Abdullah,” “At the Gate of Heaven,” “She is Etema,” “Of My Lady,” “Have You seen Her?,” “November 3rd 1987 (1-3),” “She Walks African,” and “Songs of Lachrymos” are all poems that can be studied from the experience and memory perspective. The poet has succeeded in capturing nature in its natural state. Although the poet is not overtly Ecocritical in his disposition, he only calls our attention to the beauty of nature. Niyi Osundare in his Eye of the Earth, for instance, calls on our attention to the despoliation of nature, exploitation of natural resources by capitalists. The exploitation of the environment for selfish aim is the cause of global warming today. Abdulmalik on the other hand, a keen observer of the environment, appreciates the beauty of birds, trees, spiders, describing their nature and characteristics.

The poet, however, uses one syntactic pattern. The sentential structure of his lines is phrase-like making the reader unable to be drawn into the experience the poet wants to pass across. Variety is an aspect of aesthetics that the poet failed to explore in this collection. Most of the poems have the same linguistic pattern and structure. The poet, on the whole, encouraged us to pause, take a voyage into nature, the spider you see jumping from one tree to another, weaving cobwebs, is a subject matter for literary discourse and investigation. The environment is not only available for literary adventure alone, but locked up in nature is beauty, order that can be emulated.

S. Victor is a poet and critic. A postgraduate student of the Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Abuja.