– Emeka Esogbue
The Guild of Ibusa Writers and Authors (GIWA) President and Lecturer in Theatre Studies, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Dr Henry Obi Ajumeze; Mr. Frank Okafor, ace Ibusa culture enthusiast and Onowu Chuks Esogbue, the kinship ideology founder, have provided “Solis Ocasum: Memories from my Igbuzo Sunset,” a poem composed by Dr Collins Nweke, annotations.
The trio of GIWA members who appreciated the poem published in GIWA platform, gave the Igbuzo literary piece written in verse and said to be inspired by the photography of Natalie Luys, an explanatory analysis.
Excerpts of the poem and commentaries are reproduced under:
The Poem
SOLIS OCCASUM – Memories from my Igbuzo Sunset
Long before giving a hand at the ancestral farm was no Child Labour or referred to as such
Long before it no longer was normal to be greeted with the wagging long tails of wild monkeys at the bank of the Okpuzu river
And these were long before the Literature in English tutor told us that solis occasum is Latin for sunset
I had thought that the mesmerising beauty of the sun going home
As we trek our way to our Isieke home
From out of the inner parts of the Umuehea jungles
Buoyed and energised by all sorts of natural animal sounds especially bird jingles
I had thought sunset is exclusive to Igbuzo
Nay sunset may not be exclusive to Igbuzo
But the Igbuzo Sunset is a brand apart
Sunset in Igbuzo rings a silent tone to depart
Sunset in Igbuzo makes a dip or two into Okpuzu a more unique message to our times
It rings home the end of the day’s times
It shows the passage of times
It was normal because it’s a daily passage of times
But it is equally a mystery
Mystery at how the hitherto red-sandy orange cloud with a distant touch of black disappears
Mystery at the suddenness by which darkness appears
That is the mystery of the force with which darkness appears
That is the mystery of how such darkness breeds no fear
The darkness after sunset is soothing
In my Igbuzo ancestral home sunset is soothing
With melancholic memory I found that the sunset over the North Sea in my Ostend adopted home is maybe as soothing.
The Commentaries:
The poem ‘Solis Occasum’ offers us plenty to reflect upon. We could think about its latinate title, which draws us into the once glory days of Latin as a language of privilege among men of letters. Those are really early days that the poem conjures. This journey into time is also revealing of paradoxes, because this latinate moment is juxposed with images of “the ancestral farm”. These are two worlds emerging side by side, through time, so that the reader looks to their inevitable turn of transformation.
In symbolic terms, sunset suggests ‘time dying’. But here, it invokes a beauty that lends itself to the transformation that the poet tropes. As the poet writes: ‘the darkness after sunset is soothing”. That is, the poem complicates conventional interpretation of darkness as evil and ominous, inventing a meaning that distanciates from the universal reading of darkness and sunset. I find this unique and novel. In other words, the poet draws a meaning for darkness enunciated in the Igbuzo world that he writes about.
But does the Igbuzo world truly represent a distinct meaning from the universal rendering of human knowledge of time? Or is this a poetic license that is arrested to frame and valorise his community? These questions become important when you consider that the poet actually imagines “Igbuzo sunset to be a brand apart”!
This nearly exaggerated imaginary of Igbuzo, invests the poem with a deep sense of essentialism. Among Igbuzo people this essentialism is rife, this exaggerated sense of place (I can expand on this view later). But this is deeper for this poet, writing now from Europe, one feels the poet’s loss of touch with community, in which case distance appears to impose a nostalgia and longing. Hence, towards the last stanza, we see the poet comparing sunset in Igbuzo and Ostend in Belgium.
We could further reflect on the poem in a related but different idea of geography and the natural environment. The sight and sound of Igbuzo becomes for the poet a material element for the longing from Europe. It is through this perspective that we ultimately find Igbuzo and Ostend merge in the worldview of the poet as sunset assume the same meaning for both places. There’s a lot to unpack in the poet’s environmental poetics. It’s an interesting work, very heavily invested with geographic tropes, of waters, animals, landscapes. I pause to stop!
– Dr. Henry Obi Ajumeze
This piece reminds me of my childhood days in same Isieke of Igbuzo. The sight of ‘Okpuzu swallowing the sun’ can only be seen to be fully appreciated. I actually had the same childhood thoughts.
Those who lived in Igbuzo between the 60s and 80s will profoundly appreciate it’s nostalgic effect.
– Onowu Chuks Esogbue
This poem has brought to bear that a teacher equally has a teacher. When @Dr Collins Nweke came to teach us literature in the early 80’s we were used to hearing English literature but he stated that it is literature in English. So he parroted what his teacher taught him which he passed on to us. Some of us followed up his passion and became masters of literature and two of them easily comes to mind i.e @Dr. Henry Ajumeze and Ngozi Kwusike (God rest his soul).
The poem is story like. deep and simple. It will be easier appreciated if you lived in Igbuzo in the olden days pre 90’s. You will appreciate it more if you know the okpuzu river which is the mysterious waterfall of Oboshi nmili that flows from Uzo Umuehea passing through the Ekea farmland to Oboshi uzor ozili through Umuisor and terminate to another stream in the then distant farmland of Umueze.
You can relate to the mystery of this stream behind which the red sun sets if you know that an eternal river goddess named Oboshi lives under the river with a cohort of mermaid that blesses the community with fertility and the fishes in that long river are totemic.
Now those green and beautiful biodiversity are being eroded by massive real estate development spreading deep into Igbuzo farmlands that we worry for the future of our generation next and the fear of our capacity to feed ourselves without land to farm.
Well written but I did not read what we use to do at sunset in the ancients that you reminded of. We have lost the culture of “Ita inu” but for sure “ije di agbo” exist at industrial scale.
– Mr. Frank Isioma Okafor
The Okpuzu Waterfall is located in Ibusa, Delta State. Indigenes of the community have called the Government and the private initiative to development fall with a flow of water over the edge of cliff, to a state-of-the-art tourist centre capable of generating revenues.
