Kangsen Feka Wakai
The contemporary African poet is an artist living and working in conditions of constant siege– an abiding and haunting angst, a complex informed by the hydra-headed menace of creative alienation, uncertainties of means and the devastating ambience of indifference, silence and absence that his production fallows (or worse still, withers) in. These are terrifying conditions of the annihilation of memory and consciousness that beat even the most corrosive forms of coerced institutional censorship imaginable. Wirndzerem G. Barfee
In this issue, we talk to poet Wirndzerem G. Barfee, via email, author of the poetry collection, Bird of Oracular Verb.
Joyce Ashuntantang recounts her sojourn in the kaleidoscopic alleys of identity. Her journey into speech is a candid account of her search for selfhood that aims to transcend the politics and complexities of language, nationality and race.
We are all exiles!
A man who promises to take her walking on the white sandy beaches of Kribi is propositioning poet Viola Allo. He wants her to move back to Cameroon and marry him. But unfortunately for him, in her poem, Marry Cameroonian Man, she contemplates his offer, imagines possibilities only to reveal her love for two persons, her Cameroonian father, and fortunately for Palapala magazine, poetry.
And Miriam Makeba lives forever in the rhythm of the Conakry evening wind. She sings in the shadows of dimly lit jazz joints. She lives in Sophiatown, Harlem…Miriam lives on…Miriam lives. Muna Kangsen’s 2006 interview with Mama, for she was our Mama Africa—even in a lifetime of exile, revives that enduring harmony that kindled our senses.
We might have missed the party at dawn but Tolu Ogunlesi, our man in Lagos, illuminates the fallow path of our destiny with his poetics as we thread through the rubble of dynamited citadels. He cautions us to defy the conspirators of darkness.
Speaking of Citadels, Bonamousadi, and two befitting tributes to this fixture in the lore of Ngola courtesy of Dibussi Tande and Oscar Chenyi Lebang.
On the margin of the bouillon
Marks celebrate the stupidity of
Sepianta Collectiva Cognitio
Houston based artist Abidemi offers prominent characters and characteristics of contemporary life, like the avaricious landlord, husband and wife bouts, school strikes and other aspects of "social confusion" that are features of urban living. The stage is Ikeja, Nigeria and the audience is the world. [Some of the paintings featured in this issue will be featured at the Chelsea City Gallery, as part of the Annual Chelsea Art Walk.
They are the soundtrack to the setting sun, cheerleading squads, dancing frat boys, church-going southern Baptists—veterans of the movement, Final Call selling Muslims, urban poets, incense burners and working mothers, the last song after a day’s work. This is the Marching Band according to Benna Sayyed.
And more….
Kangsen Feka Wakai
Comments