It isn’t that I have never written a poem in the absence of melancholy. I have. But there is a way melancholy pokes into your soul; it makes you feel things; it lifts the curtain over your eyes and makes you see the world with vivid alacrity. There is a way it sequestrates the feelings out of you and turns them into words. There is a way melancholy does these that joy simply doesn’t know how to. Melancholy is poetry’s favorite child.
Honestly, this first question got me thinking because during my childhood, I disliked poetry a lot. For me, it felt really boring and unrelatable. And then one day at school, we were asked to write a poem on theme of "The Sun". I was in Primary six as at that time and fortunately for me, I was perceived as a "serious" student. My only intention behind writing that poem that day was to obtain my full marks for my assessment.
Out of Seventy-one creatives from across 13 African countries including the united states who sent in their entries, the Nigerian creative has stamped Nigerian’s name in the sand of history.