Providus Bank filled out the cavernous belly of Terra Kulture on Friday March 21, 2025 with guests in celebration of World Poetry Day.
Tagged “An Evening with Wole Soyinka” the event was a 2 hour plus poetic and musical showcase featuring select poets and musicians from Nigeria and Cuba.
The poems riffed on the theme – Sand Dune and Ocean Bed – and touched on the subjects of migration, dispersal, dislocation and deracination ranging across centuries from the transatlantic slave trade to the contemporaneous japa phenomenon and forced relocations.
Poets from Nigeria included Ajayi Gemini whose line “A scattered seed is nothing short of a seed,” spoke to the abiding Africanness even of those in the diaspora.
Kafayat, lawyer/poet/guitarist presented two poems accomopanied by music. The first repeated the line “Ni bo len lo?” Yoruba for where are you going? A question addressed to a person intent on relocation.
Tijani Usman aka Tijaywebster’s performance was an afrocentric exploration that brought an eclectic and electric tenor to the proceedings as his spoken word piece was accompanied by an animation.
Tijani Usman aka TijaywebsterThe Cuban delegation presented poems and songs in Spanish and English.
Alex Pausides poem was poignant and evocative – “When I am silent, it is not that words are lacking” while Edelmis Anocento confeɔronted change and viccissitudes with “I build my house with autumn leaves/From last year’s death gasp.”
Music was provided by Emiliano whose liting voice and songs were eerily reminiscent of the Cape Verdean chanteuse, Cesaria Evora, while Camerata Cortes led by Jose Luis Cortes “El Tosco” featured an all female sextex of flautists in a performance that was at once solemn and rousing.
Camerata CortesThe highlight of the evening was Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka who debuted a new poem – “Image in a Month of Abstinence” – which he said was inspired/instigated by a recent demolition and forced relocation by the Lagos state government. Professor Soyinka likened it to the uprooting of Africans during slavery.
Wole SoyinkaAs he read, the photo of a female victim of the demolition was projected to the screen behind him while a new recording of an old song about Maroko accompanied his reading.
The opening lines….
