Bridgette's Writing School

Penned in Rage Journal Accepts Original Poems in Jamaican Patois/Creole & Their English Translation. We Want Poems in African Languages Too.
Submit Here- www.ellaspoems.com

Bridgette's Writing School

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🐣🐣🐣🐣
EASTER
Copyrighted
Wole Soyinka (1986)

This slow day dies, a wordless wilt
Shades of silence reaping
Soft frangipanes

Pollen's wings are thorned; bosoms
Too welcoming fold later chills Take death to innocents

Kinder these hard mangoes, greendrops
At the car of god-apparent, coquettes
To the future decadence.

Do we not truly fear to bleed: We hunt
Pale tissues of the palm, fingers groping
Ever cautious on the crown.

These pink frangipanes of Easter crop
Eager to the wind; by repetition weak
And rain's in-breeding,

One bough to slake the millions:
Decay Caulks earth's centre; spurned we pluck
Bleached petals for the dreamer's lair.

Borne passive on this gift, wound-plashes
From wind scavenger, sap fragrance for
A heady brew, I rode my winged as and raged —

As children wove frond yellow from the palın
Plucked at the core, within the spadix heart.

Review
〰️〰️〰️
Even those of us raised on Soyinka’s writing find it dense sometimes.

A way to understand his poetry is by asking questions.

THE FIVE Ws
The five Ws can help us begin to understand the poem. Consider: what is the poem about?

1. When is it set?

The poem opens at the close of day. It’s symbolic- we are about to mourn the passing of things. Nature has become so cruel.

The poet uses alliteration to describe the death of frangipanis/flowers. The opposite of resurrection is what is taking place.

2. Where is it set?

Outdoors; a garden somewhere in Nigeria in the 1980s, perhaps? The poet’s observing and detailing a scene. We are told children wove yellow (decaying??) palm fronds. By the way, did you use to make palm crosses for Easter Sunday? I am Anglican and my dad Mr James, used to be a Lay Preacher. 😮 I remember staying up on Holy Saturday to make crosses. 🤭 But these crosses are damaged, plucked at the core from spadix (flowers) or a spiky heart. I can feel the kids’ fingers hurting. 😮

3. Why did the poet write it?

It’s part of his Idanre and Other Poems collection. It a reflection on post colonial Nigeria and state decadence and corruption.

4. Who is speaking ('the perspective')/ who are they speaking to?

Is Wole Soyinka addressing we, the readers, Nigerian society back then or himself? He’s probably aiming fire at us all. The plural subject pronoun: we, indicates Soyinka is probably addressing his countrymen/ a collective social group.

5. What is the poem about?
This poem is about death, decadence and despair. I’m showing off now with my alliteration like the writer.
Christianity offers nothing in this poem.
Pollen has thorns, innocent children are visited by death. I’m reminded of a poem by Rasaq Malik called, ‘Bury Us.’

Jesus bled on the cross at Easter, but the subjects in being addressed in this poem
are fearful of shedding bl0.0d.

I see fingers groping, searching for answers or probably a way out of the figurative grave.

‼️THE TWO Ts-THEME / TONE‼️

I’ve already touched on part of this question.

Themes: Passivity and indifference give way to fear.

You can also think about the two Ts: theme of Easter and the poet’s dismal tone.

What do you think are the poem's key themes (the central ideas? Surely, it’s not just the Christian calendar event — celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

How would you characterise the tone? I’ve said dismal, but can you think of a better word?

Before I ride my winged ass and rage too, what do you make of the poet’s language and literary devices??

The poem is almost a tercet: each stanza consists of three lines except the last two unmetered couplet. Hmm. It makes me think of the Trinity then the Father and the Holy Ghost without a resurrected son.

Reviewed by B. James (read more in edition 6 of Penned in Rage Journal, out in October

WAHALA NOR BE SMALL
Please Don’t be Tempted into Believing Outlining with an LLM is Acceptable in Creative Writing. fans

‼️I know I sound like a broken record.‼️

Although a certain Professor Romeo — a Nigerian gentleman living in South Florida — claims I am stupid, I passed Hendon Police School and graduated from a British university with a first class honours. I’ve also been placed in writing competitions here. But aye I still so fool sef. Lek suss (shoes) Chai! Waitin ah sabi sef? Natin.

Still let me try and dissuade you from using AI to structure your stories or poems. It takes a team longer to process your submission when some sections land and others have a different register. I don’t resort to detection tools as are they infallible?

What is Outlining with AI?

I don’t know for sure. Romeo talk say ah stupid. But I think it means using a scaffold from an app, then beefing it up with your own lexicon. Anyway, the two registers never gel. I’m having to PRINT out some of these ‘off-register’ pieces to read and be sure. It’s time consuming. A human-authored piece reads SMOOTHLY. It’ll be an easy yes or no.

It seems like I keep on and on, but I just like authentic, human-written content.

(Photo: my son’s a natural. 🤭)

⚠️Disclaimer
I use Turnitin to Check Your Submission Has Not Already Been Published

Do you need a student's permission to use Turnitin?
In the UK, Students Are Not Required to Give Permission for Turnitin to Be Used to Check for a Similarity Review.

When was Turnitin launched?
In 1998. Well before the advent of AI. It Is not an AI detection tool.

How ethical is it?
So ethical, its scores are admissible in courts in the UK and around the world.
www.ellaspoems.com

Poor naughty Professor Romeo, a Nigerian living in South Florida.
O “Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo” (in a tavern)?

Thou speaketh not any sense unless a stirrer thou be? Such a meddling stirrer as useth to stir ale.🍺 Merrily I say to thee, lay off the ogogorro and palm wine 🍷 or a rascal they’ll make of thee.

Romeo, “Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet.”

fans
We Should All Be Feminists, says Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her December 2012 TEDxEuston yearly conference talk.

That year’s theme was Africa.

Book Review
🩵🧡🩷💙🧡🩷💙🩵
(Published by Fourth Estate, 2014

Please do not dismiss feminists as your usual stereotypes. Fourteen-year-old Okoloma labelled young Chimamanda a feminist because she was feisty.

And that’s the problem, an argumentative in-your-face female pushing for gender equality is often labelled a feminist, like it’s a cuss word. When Chimamanda was promoting her 2003 novel: Purple Hibiscus, a man apparently told her, people were beginning to see the author as a feminist. That carried a sexist connotation: In Nigeria back then, feminists were seen as women who couldn’t find husbands. 😀

Dare I say I am an old school feminist then? I’ve never been married…

On page 29, Chimamanda relays the story of ‘a Nigerian woman who decided to sell her house because she didn’t want to intimidate a man who might want to marry her.’ 😮

This is an essay of 52 pages that invites us to challenge the definition of emasculation. Successful women should not make African men feel emasculated or intimidated.

If a lady is richer than you, would you chat her up? Nah. I’m not addressing so-called Yahoo boys. The other day a guy messaged me on Facebook saying: Are you looking marriage? Coming to Enugu.

Those aside, I am an unmarried woman of a certain age, the kind referenced in this essay. Are we failures? Let me quote Chimamanda’s words to answer that: ‘[t]he reality is more difficult, more complex…The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership.’ (Page 30). I like to be the boss of me. I don’t want to be owned by a bloke who has chauvinistic principles. The continent tends to produce a fair amount of men who want to rule their household and be the boss of their wives.

My take: Men can choose to support feminism over misogyny or vice versa. 🤭 😮