Es'kia Mphahlele
Professor Emeritus, Doyen of African Literature
Lebowakgomo, Limpopo Province, South Africa
December 2001
Written on The Parliament of Idiots
Overview On Tayo Olafioye's Works
African poets have long come to realize that
they need new themes for their new creations. Independence
since Ghana (1957) was a watershed. Gone are the yester-years
of anti-colonial attacks and their corollary, nationalism.
Nor did this latter mood last long once the seventies set
in. Back, then, a new tyranny had already set up its throne,
making itself comfortable. The stage was set for political
self-destruction: military rule, dictatorship, greed, imprisonment,
preventive detention, executions. After the Nigerian civil
war, Wole Soyinka was asking, "Where are all the followers
gone?" In so many countries, not least Nigeria, poverty, plundering
of national resources, exile of political enemies, civil war
overtook the continent: all this in the midst of want, ignorance,
diseases.
The new voices, such as today's Tayo Olafioye,
are a clear example of the break with the idyllic verses Africa
was singing. In high political times and fiery nationalism,
Africans had to find spiritual leverage against white rule
and reaffirm their cultural togetherness. Suddenly, the stuff
of post-colonial poetry had to find a new language, mood and
goals for a new kind of urgency: home-grown political tyranny.
The pastoral lyricism of yesterday has all but petered out.
There is now a voice in the present-day modes that makes itself
heard. It makes for a dramatic tension in the poetry suggesting
a dialogue between poet and a political Other. The enemy is
no longer simply white rule and the colonizing aspects of
Christianity. We are under native elites propped up by the
former colonial power as mere compradors. This breed is the
real and visible enemy: the man who was my schoolmate, with
whom I shared living space, and the banter and bustle and
adventures of youth.
Yet political tyranny is not the only theme,
as we find in our present collection. The tender moments of
family reunions; speculations about dying; remembrance of
kinder days gone by, kinder days of the present; marital bliss....
The poet lets us share the landscape of his mind-states as
he travels from place to place from his base San Diego, California;
the shifting states of mind in a restless soul.
All these features come to us assertively
- in a driving diction. A compelling diction with muscle and
enthusiasm. We observe in the process of his search for a
resolution emotional centre that stays in charge of the poet's
diction. The verse keeps rolling on, wave after wave. It conjures
up in our minds the image of a night traveller drawn irresistibly
to a distant light flickering in the distance: on and on and
on. Drawn towards some resolution. Distances are an illusion
in the dark. No sooner does the good appear within reach than
the footsteps seem never-ending.
Thus there is in Olafioye's exploration of
his shifting states of mind an air of unfinished business.
Yet the wholeness of each poem is not necessarily sacrificed.
I always find intriguing in poetry, rather than the appearance
of a finality. We read about his visit - after the first ten
years, to his native Nigeria, where he finds himself in the
presence of his mother. He tells us about her subsequent death;
about meeting his grandma, "contentment dancing across his
face": "one with children never dies". He experiences moments
of "shocking delight"... "If you were a star / We would have
stayed in the galaxy with you...." "To carry the flags of
memory.... " "My absence has been / The only connection between
us to date..."
The poet's travels keep his sensibilities
quivering with the compulsion to articulate memory. An experience
only the person knows who is living away from his loved ones,
his roots. You cling to memory as your lifeline. Wherever
you go, if you have your pores and eyes constantly open, you
register disparate "architects of the mind". Don't ever let
go of that lifeline - memory. Poetry, whether in the form
of verse, fiction, drama, becomes a medium of therapy. He
invokes the essence of poetry in his ritual of reaffirmation
of his origins, anchored in ancestral presences and their
enduring companionship and protection. The meeting point between
the condition of exile and self-fulfilment.
Another compulsion: concern over the tragedy
that Nigeria had become, since the civil strife of the sixties
of the lost century. Politician become millionaire, Abacha,
was only an active extension and invalid of a post-traumatic
condition that continues to dog the country. Olafioye's driving
diction registers the rumblings and gloom of recent years.
"In the crevice of time / All darkness and no sun / ..." "Endemic
auras of sadness / Wicked thoughts unspeakable..." His consolation?
"Life breathes even on the dung heaps...."
Of course we have been here before in Olafioye's
previous collections: Arrowheads to rny Heart (1999); A Carnival
of Looters, A 5troke of Hope, Ubangiji - all three in 2000.
The images of conflict, of unease continue to vibrate in us:
"The cyclone of depravity....Auschwitz sounds a millennium
agoŻ.Carnivals of decadence..." "How do you pray for hope
/ a nation ruled by demons / with hairs in their teeth..."
"The beasts amidst us / Scavenged dung heaps for cadavers";
... "To stay the reign of / The most satanic pope of Islam
/ ... The Khalif of ritual death / Called abacha of Nigeria...."
Not all shade by any means, though. After
a heroic recovery from illness, Olafioye's search, we are
reassured, will yet find resolution. Never absolute, even
at that; yet we know he has the unflagging energy to keep
renewing self.
