Title: A Booktiful Love
Author: Tolu’ A. Akinyemi
No. of Pages: 63
Genre: Poetry
Year of Publication: 2020
ISBN: 9781913636005
Publisher: The Roaring Lion Newcastle
Reviewer: Jide Badmus
You can’t overburden a book. This is to say the best way to preserve memory is to commit it to the page. Mother would say, the book never complains of neck pain. She writes down all her financial transactions—debtors, creditors, expenses & expenditures. Because the biggest human plague is forgetfulness.
The losses that accompanied the last pandemic—the grief, the silence—demanded intense reflections. Little wonder Tolu’ A. Akinyemi unloaded, in this book, all the thoughts, anxiety, frustrations, & hopes the COVID-19 lockdown afforded him.
His intentions are clear, even from the lines of his poems: change the world, one writer at a time or at least, try—catalogue experiences & expectations. Draw me with all my imperfections/Sketch me with my filth—/with my scars and wrinkles/mistakes and joy, sorrows and dreams/Erase nothing… (Bury Me in a Library). Transfer pain to paper, write & rant, document interactions, perceptions & encounters.
One of the things the 2020 pandemic gave us was a tapestry of new vocabulary & it seems the author tapped into this grace in naming his collection—A Booktiful Love. A book is a beautiful thing. Love is probably the most complex one syllable word in existence. Yes, this book brims with the contents of a beautiful mind—love & remedies, dreams & aftermaths…& everything that revolves around humanity.
Divided into three sections, Tolu’ took us on a didactic excursion through 48 socially conscious poems. The first poem, Isolation, speaks about the disruption to our lifestyle. How long & short-term dreams took a massive hit. How everything took a break when the virus hit. All of a sudden, interactions with people & nature required a manual. The poem poignantly highlighted the fear that haunted us during that period. We watched the news/and the news fed our hearts, until the gloom//crept from the screens into our souls.
Your Dreams Are Valid is a solid reminder that breath is the fuel of ambitions—your hopes of touching your dreams are only genuinely over when you die. Neophyte tells us that visions usually start off blurry & giant ideas shoot from mustard thoughts. The poem emphasises the inevitability of mistakes—the need for resilience as we stutter to triumph.
It’s okay to be on the periphery—
Start from rock bottom
Till you reach the zenith
The second section focuses on political poems, exploring the corruption of the mind & the lust for immortality. Poems like I Belong to Nobody, Aso the Death Post, Erect a Statue for Me in Imo probe into the mystery of bribery, lootery, obscure economic schemes & the campaign of deceit, coloured by lies. It is no wonder the dream of the average youth in the country is to japa,—because poverty has reached a menopause.
We salivated with the thoughts of greener pastures
…and our nights were coloured with wet dreams
In those dreams, we conjured a future of bliss…
-Frozen, page 8
The final section of the book engages love & beauty in all of their forms—vividly capturing the duality nature of things. Love is volatile. Beauty is vulnerable. Let Him Go tells a story of a marriage gone sour, traversing the passage to divorce. Sweet words shapeshift into lethal slugs, Loud Voices shake the walls of compassion. How do you end a shouting match?/You pray for silence. Grave silence.
The anguish of your words
Are body blows.
End this grief. End this grief called matrimony.
Don’t force him to stay if he wants away.
-Let Him Go, page 41
The “Beauty &” poems pay tribute to the woman’s pain, passion & royalty. Such is the thematic engagement of this book—kaleidoscopic. This is the strength of this collection, its variety, its exploration of the mundane & the dysfunctional. I enjoyed the simplicity of his delivery, though I think some of the titles could do with a little wit & hue. Beyond Charmazing (& of course, the title poem), each poem confronts you with the seriousness of its subject matter—& the nudity of an honest mind.
In the heart of this book, you’ll find love, dreams & everything between—silence, identity, social values, history, politics…& more. It’s a book of hearts
Jide Badmus
Author, What Do I Call My Love for Your Body?
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