Funso Aiyejina

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Funso Aiyejina
Born 1949
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(No Transcript)
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Gurara Falls
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Baobab tree
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Lagos
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Amos Tutuola
Born 1920
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Chinua Achebe
Born 1930
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Flora Nwapa
1931-1993
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Christopher Okigbo
Born 1932
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Wole Soyinka
Born 1935
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Ken Saro-Wiwa
1941-1995
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Buchi Emecheta
Born 1944
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Ben Okri
Born 1959
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Babatunde OlatunjeEbenezer ObeyKing Sunny
AdeFela Kuti
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Sokari Douglas Camp
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Iriabo Woman
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BirdMasquerade
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HippoMasquerade
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(No Transcript)
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Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles dAvignon
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BigMasquerade
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FlyingFish withBubbles
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To Abuehnameh at FourNo, son, I was not going
to the hospital to my brother.He died. Yes.
He did.Not as in games about doctors and
patients which you now playWith your
brotherSince your encounters with the surgeon's
art earlier in the year.He diedIn spite of the
doctors in spite of the nurses in spite of
hope.He died on the last day of
AprilAprilthe cruellest month!But we are
now safely into MayMaythe month of your
birth!And after our sad loss at the end of
April's showersLet us welcome back your day of
mirthInto the month on whose wet wings of
flowersYou danced triumphant into our expectant
world.Child of the ministering rains of the
month of MayAnd of green branches garnished with
bird-songs of love,Long may you survive the
cruel April of the poet's calendar.
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No, son, I was not going to the hospital to my
brother. He died in April. For real. The doctors
couldnt save him. But now its May, the month
of your birth! Lets celebrate your birthday
instead of mourning! May you live through many
terrible Aprils to beautiful Mays!
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No, son, I had not gone to see my brother.Twas
April when the illness took his life.But now
that month has turned into another,A month of
joy for me and for my wife.Forget about the
sorrow that can hound us,And think of how your
birthday comes today.Let happiness and pleasure
now surround us,As melancholy April turns to
May!
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Allusion
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Whan that Aprille with his shoures sooteThe
droghte of March hath perced to the roote,And
bathed every veyne in swich licour,Of which
vertu engendred is the flour Geoffrey
Chaucer opening of The Canterbury Tales
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April is the cruelest month, breedingLilacs out
of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire,
stirringDull roots with spring rain. T.S.
Eliot opening of The Waste Land
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Trinidad
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A View of the Caribbean and Its Memoriesof Our
Not-so-Recent Collective Past(To Helen, whose
gift of a picture of a West Indian harbourmade
it possible)
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History-stretched between forgotten ancestors and
cussing new world cousins, I pause to count our
combined sins of blood and our collective crimes
of eternities by the wavelashes that shatter the
calm of the mirror-surface of your sun-framed
fortunes and I contemplate your holiday resorts
into mosaics of silhouette slave ships that
sit safe in protected harbours to await the
arrival of auctioneers and cheap labour
merchants shadows that cast shadows to map
out your white sea breakers into the
mast-sails that once floated ships which were
pregnant with our ancestral limbs,
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• luminous dusk-glow that stays the mind
• on the last constants of primordial nightmares
• and details that accentuate details
• to whip our past awake into our present pains.
• Still, like the sea that now gives you a home and
  a name,
• I wonder if the tidal waves of your brave new
  world
• have whirled you beyond the bedrock of your sea
• and washed you past the memorial beacons
• of those ancient dreams that predators
• from within and without our ranks
• conspired to discredit and freeze into museum
  pieces.