Poetry Video: Things Poets Do by Umar Sidi

In this new poetry film, Umar Abubakar Sidi brings life to his poem, Things Poets Do. This poem, its powerful rendition and filming, is an experimentation on the true nature of poetry and poets. It also demonstrates Konya Shamsrumi’s commitment to working across genres, in this case setting poetry to music and visual art.

Things Poets Do by Umar Sidi

The Nigerian poet and literary critic, Paul Liam, describes Umar Abubakar Sidi and his collection, The Poet of Dust, thus:

‘Sidi is magical, unpretentious and radical in his conceptualization of poetry. The collection celebrates the allure of the poem. It equally teaches, elicits and mocks the philistine inquisitor. Through the employment of different poetic forms and styles such as allusion, lyric, metaphor, imagery, allegory, symbolism, witticism, amplified by a sturdy narrative technique that sometimes calls to mind elegant prose, The Poet of Dust manifests varied influences drawing largely from Arabic, Greek and unapologetically imitates loosely classical English epics poetry such as Iliad, Odyssey, Beowulf, especially with its intricate metaphorization of the poet as “man and dust”.