Everything Here
I read the entire compendium of Shakespeare’s sonnets in junior high school, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about in most of them, but loving the sounds and the mathematical arrangements of the words. Love Is Not Love (sonnet cxvi) is still a favourite. At the peak of my identity crises when I started to terribly fear that I did not belong and perhaps never would, I discovered Emily Dickinson. And there she was, speaking to my spirit. In the same way that the Psalms did which was a powerful crutch for me as I was estranged from religion at the time.
But I picked up the pieces, one by one, And slowly learned to let the healing begin. I found solace in the silence, and peace in the night, And slowly, I started to shine with new light.
I remember always turning back in the car when we pass a particular sculpture and I remember the sculpture, "a woman with long breasts breastfeeding a child". That sculpture was intriguing to me as a child
Western arrogant rationality, which tends to overhaul other perspectives has ushered every part of the world into the age of "posts": post-modernism, post-marxism, post-truth, post-humanism, and we even hear things such as post-Africanity. Fortunately, Africa has not caught the flu of this chaos completely. And, as the overfed children of hypercapitalism and consumer culture get exhausted in their boredom, Africa will be the place of what being human looks like—albeit if the Western power doesn't change us too soon.
This is a collection of poems from a poet that will grow if she persists. She is requesting that we journey with her.
Perhaps, Bala has not set out with such contemplation in this collection as the poems herein are the dialogue of two lovers we are conscripted into attending. But more happens.
Moments. Fleeting. Art captures them, or some part of their essence, in a specific form. Poetry gives us an expression that beautifies this capture through various devices and renditions that, if done well, leave us with something to hold on to.
