Star Okpeh is a Nigerian writer and poet, Miombo’s Princess Of African Poetry 2019 and the author of The Dance of Dawn. She has a great interest in music, drama and community service. A member of Writers Space Africa, a volunteer at the African Writer’s Development Trust and Head of Writers at Portal Network International. Aside from writing and the beauty it paints to her, Star presently works as a volunteer at The Christian Faith Homes, Abuja, where she finds peace, warmth, and fulfillment in working with children. JB Burrage, an American writer and publisher, has said of her—” Star is a communicator. A true storyteller. A new vibe in a world that needs to be shaken and reminded of who we are. She’s the Future and The Bridge.”
The bitter suffering of poetry lies in the fact that it bears our pain so well. This is bitter because pain is not sweet. You’ll see that a poet writes more sadness than they write Joy. They write more peace and solitude than the excitements connected with living. A poet is a receptive mechanism to his environment. He feels deeply and that is why pain is more attracted to him. Pain is deep and laughter is only a fleeting memory of depth.
A poet isn’t just a translator of artistic words. He is a sword but, sometimes, he is not afraid to become a little kitten left out in the cold. So, here is fear and pain. Here is the creative side of darkness that we never seem to become fairly acquainted with. Like the stars we see, which are so far away that they might, in fact, have collapsed and died before their light reaches us.
A poet believes pain to be the ever-attractive element of creativity. Solitude, Solace, and Silence. Pain is not physical discomfort, it is spiritual. And as all things spiritual, pain is mental and psychologically. What a poet sees in Nature is himself. Of the earth. And a true poet in line with his mystical side knows that the sufferings of the earth is suffering for him too. That is one reason they appear as moralists, enlightened scientists, musicians, dedicated housewives or clergymen whose third eyes are opened to creation and the creator.
When we write poetry, we feel different emotions all at once and soon bow down to one.
This is what it feels like when a poet is faced with pain. He feels strength and the vulnerability of his fate but chooses to be vulnerable all the same. He chooses this because he understands that pain inspires and heals. Pain connects because it is relative to the recesses of man. The world knows pain more than it knows happiness because it is what it is. Isn’t that why we all believe in the hereafter?
A poet left to his devices will say that the world is in a calabash and when one day it is broken, he will resolve in a laughter that drops in—drip, drip, drop.
- Festival of Drums || Star Okpeh - May 11, 2021
- Merging Words and Faith | #Star - February 7, 2021
- Pain and a Poet– #Star - March 28, 2020
