•Continued from last edition
IKEOGU OKE
Here, then, lies the essence of the poem as a dreamer and pacifist: its simultaneous envisioning of the de-escalation of conflicts strictly by conciliation and their resolution through personal commitment to eschew the use of arms.
In fact, it offers these, within and beyond the bounds of verse, as general principles for engendering peace in the world. They are also reflections of my belief that, though as artists we must fulfil our primary obligation to create beauty through our work, we can also make art more useful by using it to stimulate the evolution of a more liveable world. The poem does the latter by promoting peace (in a context that integrates respect for life) among countless options of such engagement open to artists across the world. And I have tried to do the former by creating such a book-length poem whose every line can be sung and set to music, making it a book-length art song, a musical epic in four cantos that may also be described as a literary symphony in four movements. I call it operatic poetry, a new genre of poetry intended to open new frontiers for its enjoyment. For I consider its action, drama and music primed for realisation – and to be realisable and awaiting realisation – as opera. And I clearly anticipate the materialisation of this artistic vision like the world which, as Santayana reminds us, Columbus found without a chart. I might not have entered for let alone won this prize but for a friend and fellow writer who read the manuscript of The Heresiad and asked me to submit it for the prize, describing it as “a magnum opus”.
Though flattered by the description, I hesitated, explaining that it was unpublished and needed more work before I would consider it publishable. He later wore down my resistance with his gentle insistence. Would we have been here today, I on this side of the proceedings, but for his special encouragement? I doubt it.
To this inspiring friend, Wale Okediran, I dedicate this prize, and to many others like him who offered various forms of encouragement for the twenty-seven years I worked on The Heresiad.
“We must always give back,” Nadine Gordimer, my friend and mentor, said to me at our last meeting before her demise in 2014. To this friend I have given back a token of a poem, entitled “Goodwill and Destiny”, that is also a song. But I have modified it to the following lines for the purpose of this speech and have had it set to music, which I consider the worthiest companion of poetry.
I crave your indulgence to rise and join me and let us read and sing it as believers in the value of goodwill, friendship, gratitude, and as a song of universal brotherhood, and to the glory of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, my Muse, the Ebony Pearl, and Nigerian Literature, addressing the fourth and sixth lines respectively to the male and female next to us as we read and sing:
We are what we are because of others
With whom the heavens steer our lives like rudders.
And may the heavens gift your life a rudder
Like this brother from another mother;
And may the heavens gift your life a rudder
Like this sister from another mother.
Being an Acceptance Speech for the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature by Ikeogu Oke, presented at the Muson Centre, Lagos, February 7, 2018. Email: [email protected]