Is there any future for poetry?

Throughout my entire secondary school life, the only poem I'd ever loved was "Down by the Salley Gardens"; a poem by Irish Poet William Butler Yeats, published in The Wanderings of Oisin and other poems in 1889. I still sing it in my room every now and then. A nice poem with meaning... Until form 5, I still didn't find poetry mesmerizing - rather, I was too lazy or unprepared to find it mesmerizing. Poetry like drama, looked and sounded archaic. It sounded too British or American or Scottish than worldly. I really didn’t understand how and why people wrote poetry, until I began writing poetry. I didn't feel the need to belong. I'd never taken up some random poetry to read for no reason… Never. I never even read the ones in syllabus to completion. I always had to choose from a lot and do some speculations as to what might or must be set at the exams.

Then came form 5. And it felt like they had chosen those 18 poems for a reason... The 18 selected poems from The Sheldon Book of Verse, Book 3; an anthology by PG Smith and JF Wilkins. Those poems that not only did I understand for the purpose of passing my exams, but because I'd started using my "mind's eye" to visualize everything clearly and get into the feeling. Poems like Meredith's "From the Woods of Westermain" and Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" gave me goosebumps. I asked myself: "Is this what poetry really is?" Yes. A mixture of melancholy and ecstasy. And I wondered why I had been so aloof to it in the first place. But this sensation didn’t send me wandering off in search of poetry books just so I could get more of this new found treasure. My revelation came in Lower sixth when I discovered Geoffrey Chaucer and a host of African Poets in Wole Soyinka’s “Poems of Black Africa”; an anthology that gathered a bunch of African Poets and their works. Therein, I discovered Oswald Mbuyiseni, Agostino Neto, Amin Kassam and so many others. For once in my life, I wasn’t just mesmerized by poetry, but I felt a deep connection to it. This was poetry that spoke to the colour of my skin. It spoke to make my africanness ampler. I fell in love, alas! But did I ever read poetry out of class?

Some time last year, I reached out to about 10 brilliant poet friends of mine and made known my intention of working on a Poetry Anthology with them. They were all excited and agreed to work with me. We were to call it “The Highway Scrolls”… Long story cut short, this anthology never saw the light of day. It’s still a project left to suffer from the haste and uncertainty of its masters. But why did the project not succeed? Maybe because people don’t read poetry out of class? Maybe because poetry is for academia and as struggling young people, we needed something that could give us a ready source of income? The maybes are truths… Some weeks ago, I thought of reviving the project and this time, decided to contact only a few of those I worked the first project with – at least those who were serious or showed signs of sufficient seriousness. I met new fantastic poets and decided to include them. But I still had one challenge… This poet and author I greatly admire said she couldn’t be part of us. And her reason was simple and comprehensible… Poetry doesn’t have proceeds like prose. I mean, people would die for a good piece of story – be it fiction or non-fiction. She said published poetry was for those who wanted their poems to be inserted into the curriculum. She isn’t wrong. As a person who once didn’t like poetry, I understand why many people don’t find it enticing.. Because to be honest, we all prefer continuums of stories and some of the only poetries that ever gave us that are The Canterbury Tales and Paradise Lost by Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton respectively.

And while many battle on to completely eradicate poetry from the face of the earth. Some of us try to take if off the phase of death. While poetry seems to be dying, it keeps evolving. It has been noticed that if people don’t want to read poetry, they might want to listen to it, they might want to watch it, they might want to live it… And poetry in other forms comes out almost as strong as prose and drama. Spoken word poets are having conventions all over Africa and the world. We are having live poetry recital sessions almost everywhere. We are seeing new people having new found love in poetry. And this either stops some poets from becoming pseudo novelists, or it brings them back to their niche. A niche which seems like it can’t be income-generating - niche nonetheless. To the question I asked, I don’t know. I don’t think Shakespeare, Dickens et al ever thought they’ll have this impact on modern literature. Trends go out of vogue and become fashion again. So don’t let your pen down because you’re doing it alone. You’re probably one of the Guardians of Poetry right now. If poetry has a future, it’ll depend on you and me – the writers and the readers of poetry.