Penned in Rage Literary Journal, Edition 6
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Dr Jive Lubbungu
Editorial
Editorial Staff
Chukwuebuka Onyishi
Janine Milne
Lergon Parris
Bridgette James
Art
Kumbukani Chawinga
Photography
Ahmad Gani
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A woman's flesh is oil - child, palm oil on your tongue'
-'Dedication' by Wole Soyinka,
in Idanre and Other Poems (1967),
Published by Hill and Wang || New York
Poets Critiquing Poets
Title: Your World Needs Sweeting, Child
Writing in the 2026 summer edition of the Poetry Review, London-based Poet, Oluwaseun Olayiwola says, ‘A poet’s music is a mixture of things: diction, white space, typographic eclecticisms, prosody and of course, syntax.’ How the poets Wole Soyinka and Rasaq Malik create a musical sound in their stanzas is through their choice of words, unusual layout or visual style, rhythm and line formation.
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R.M Gbolahan, The Origin of Wounds (2025) [Winner of the 2024 Anhinga Prize for poetry] Published by Anhinga press || Florida
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W. Soyinka, Idanre and Other Poems (1967), Published by Hill and Wang || New York
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Kayode Adesimi Robbin-Coker, One Day of Rain,’ in What the Seashell Said to Me: A collection of Poems from Sierra Leone (2022), Published by Ella’s Poems Project
‘In Wole Soyinka’s poem ‘Koko Oloro,’ I can hear small children playing and chanting. How delightful. The anaphora ‘plead for me,’ builds rhythm throughout the piece. The poem is experienced with the ear, the mouth and eyes, completing a sensory circuit. I kept asking myself several questions while reading it:
Why is this kno dolorous or mournful?
What is a kno?
Apart from lines 1 and 9, every line has three words, making this poem a neat song of evenly spaced syllables. Incidentally, we locate the narrator-poet in line nine, on a tree shoot which they call a threshold They’re binding leaves with a tree stalk, a (flower) bud, three berries into a bitter potion. It feels like a mythical process involving nature. Then the poet casts their voice and implores this ‘knot of bitters’ to plead for them. Honestly, I wish I knew why? Still, I like the not-knowing. It’s probably just child’s play.
I come with eager anticipation to the delightfully eloquent, Rasaq Malik’s work. Upon glancing at the collection’s title, I realised there would be some sort of disclosure about where the soreness or damage to a skin originated from.
“R. M. Gbolahan is a cartographer
whose preoccupation is with mapping out the effect
of sociopolitical conflict on the landscape of children’s minds.”
Therefore, I am not looking for a recount of factual historical atrocities in The Origin of Wounds, but for a symbolic juxtaposing of these occurrences next to the psychosocial trauma minors experience.
The map Rasaq Malik draws in his opening poem, ‘Biography of Homeland,’ includes areas where: children wake up each morning uncertain of their safety, in its margins. I read that with Wole Soyika’s warning in mind:
'[Y]our world needs sweeting, child' -'Dedication'
by Wole Soyinka, in Idanre and Other Poems (1967).
Both Wole Soyinka’s and Rasaq Malik’s political preoccupations emerge quite early in the collections. The backdrop to Rasaq M. Gbolahan’s poetry collection are the atrocities committed by violent Islamic extremists (Boko Haram and its splinter groups) in Nigeria. Although the poet broadens his telescopic lens to frame conflict in other parts of the globe such as the event at Eagle Pass, Texas; Jamestown 1619; El Hierro, El Dorado and the 2021 suicide-bomber attack in Northern Cameroon.
In ‘Easter’ by Wole Soyinka Christianity offers nothing the playing children referenced in the poem. Pollen has thorns, innocent children are visited by death. Pollen has thorns, innocent children are visited by death. I’m reminded of a poem by Rasaq Malik called, ‘Bury Us.’
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 palm
Plucked at the core, within the spadix heart.
“Even those of us raised on Soyinka’s writing find it dense sometimes.
A way to understand his poetry is by asking questions.”
The opposite of intense specificity is complex metaphorical language. A reader has to work harder to decode Soyinka’s phrases. A contrast can be made between Soyinka’s obscurity and Rasaq Malik’s clarity.
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 use of
alliteration like the writer. Jesus bled on the cross at Easter, but the subjects in being addressed in this poem are fearful of shedding blood. I see fingers groping, searching for answersor probably a way out
of the figurative grave.
"Both Rasaq Malik Gbolahan and Dr Kayode Adesimi Robbin-Coker inhabit traditions which imbue their poems with similarities to those of Wole Soyinka."
A poem should have the power to transport you into another hemisphere, however transient that process is. The poems of Soyinka and Gbolahan possess that ability. Rasaq’s featured poem is like an incantation whose anaphoric word: ‘praise’ is reminiscent of Chinua Achebe’s classic poem, ‘Vultures.” ‘Praise bounteous providence if you will…’ COPYRIGHTED Chinua Achebe.
I read in a Newsletter by the London Magazine, that literature generally concerns itself with four aspects: love, friendship, pain and desire.
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Near Bodrum, the body of a three-year-old
Alan Kurdi lies face down on the beach.
Source: Requiem at Sea
In The Origin of Wounds, Rasaq Malik Gbolahan
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#wole-soyina-rasaq-malik-gbolahan
MK Kuol
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Amazon Book Link: https://amzn.eu/d/0j3FhvVq
Grief, as Depicted in the Work of South Sudanese Poet: MK Kuol
MK Kuol’s Twice the Size of the Sun, was a joint winner
in the 2024 Chapbook Prize Pengician Poetry
In his essay titled Extraordinary Cases, published in the Poetry Foundation on May 18, 2026, Joshua Bennet writes, the practice of poetry offers us: both the inspiration to go against the grain of the present world and the instruments needed to reshape that world.
That is exactly what South Sudanese poet, Kuol does with his writing. He summaries the present sociopolitical failings in his country and attempts to reshape his world, all while maintaining a grieving tone. MK Kuol’s poetry is weighted by his obsession with grief as in the case of Rasaq Malik in The Origin of Wounds. That is because MK Kuol hails from a succession of West African poets who have experienced personal trauma due to sociopolitical conflicts, whether it be Christopher Okigbo writing during the height of the Biafran war or more recently, poets documenting the atrocities of Boko Haram.
John Chinaka Onyeche defines this grief as a: “ritual and inheritance; it testifies to the lives of a people shaped by generations of conflict.
here//what’s said is not heard
here//what’s shown is not seen
here//what’s found is not kept
here//what’s grown is not tended”
Source: Poem a, page 10
Kuol’s use of visual imagery paints a gloomy picture of what I want to call a collective suffering which is also inherently personal. This suffering is palpable in the lines: i disentangled myself / from the snarl the night was /& lumbered into the day’s sawed-jaws. As we traverse with the poet who has laboriously separated himself from night’s grasp, we encounter even more pain in broad daylight in sawed-jaws. The use of tactile imagery makes a reader feel the impact trauma has had on Kuol. I am transported back to 2024 and reminded of the gruesome images on BBC news from South Sudan, where a war still wages between two opposing factions on the military government. (Wikipedia, 2026)
Here is the rest of the cited stanza:
over the naked trees
a faint flame flowered into a full-blooded bead.
i disentangled myself
from the snarl the night was
& lumbered into the day’s sawed-jaws.
& there. there in the vestiges—
our feet left on earth’s face as we danced
to the music of our heartbeats in the rain
before our hearts knew this pain we now know by face—
reposed thousands of squashed skulls
&I broken bones, worm-licked to shine:
telltales of what my country became
after becoming a country.
Source: Poem b, page, 10
The chapbook is makes a ‘heavy read,’ concurs John Chinaka Onyeche each poem unfolds like a single extended lament, and the motifs of the sun, grief, mothers, war, and memory, have a layered meaning.
“I think even the word ritual
evokes a cultural performance of grief.”
MK Kuol’s soul is clothed in intense sorrow. If a poet is forced to be a witness to traumatic events, what other choices do they have, except to make art?
like a ritual;
i pen a poem each morning
to rinse off grief
the grungy garment
my shredded soul has become.
Source: Poem a, page 9
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Contributor, John Chinaka Onyeche is a Nigerian writer and historian from Okotokoche Igbodo Etche in Rivers State. He writes from Port Harcourt. His work has appeared in York Literary Review, McNeese Review, Pier Review, Tilted House Journal, Brittle Paper, Tampered Press, Ta-Adesa, Afrocritik, among others.
Reference List
Sudanese Civil war (2023-Present) Available at: Sudanese civil war (2023–present) - Wikipedia (Accessed 21 August 2026
Author's Bio
MK Kuol, recently shortlisted for the Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry, was the second-place winner of the annual Pengician Poetry Chapbook Prize. His works have appeared on Pulp Lit, Spillwords, Port Harcourt Literary Review, Fiction Niche, Kalahari Review and elsewhere. MK Kuol loves dark rooms, coffee, moon-gazing, folk music (Arizona JJ’s to be exact) and conspiracies. He tweets (rarely) @mk_kuol14
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#mk-kuol-twice-the-size-of-sun
Poems
1. Why God Left my Country
by Jonathan Ukah
The things I see are what I don’t see;
I see the invisible things crawling away,
like a black kite wearing gold earrings,
a yellow mouse digging holes in the sky,
the dead speaking through my mother,
telling her how hunger blinded them to their fate.
My father was always holding my hands
each time he went to church on Sunday.
He never went to church on a Wednesday or Friday,
those days were reserved for the deacons
who must wear a pious mask and robe
and sit on the front pews, rubbing their temples.
He said the priest drinks aromatic gin in the evening,
and mounts the pulpit the next morning.
He has a deep and strong head, my father said.
Else he should have drunk the living water;
it’s not everywhere, but in the ribs of blood;
water is the desert that forgets to dry up.
Since we returned from Port Harcourt,
we drink the living water from the blood.
Here’s the dead having it sweeter than water,
sweeter than the living have memories of a sacrifice,
though the army offers us something to drink
that’s neither water nor blood nor hemlock,
if you show them where your treasures are.
The police also charge people for being alive.
It's not bribery; her children justify wisdom.
The gods are somewhere watching their people,
while God left the country for the absent gods.
My father said the snake offered God the apple;
In a country that has too many snakes as gods;
perhaps this is why God ran out of my country,
lest the police capture Him as one of the snakes.
Nobody has the right to be a naked body,
strutting up and down the streets for clothes to wear;
there’s a charge for everything, even for being a god.
Who will blame them when ordinary wood is gold,
and the wind turns a drizzle into a thunderstorm?
Yet, my father said, the children ate sour grapes,
and their fathers’ teeth are always set on edge.
See how dragonflies chase the stars and the moon,
hopping on the piled-up bodies of worshippers;
who control the influx of foreign insects and flies
when the angels follow God to escape abroad.
I asked my father if God should remake my country.
From where then? You don’t seem to understand.
But I understood the police arresting angels as God,
rather than command their morning to put dawn in its place.
Birds sleep with giraffes; goats marry ants;
there’s an elephant about to wed a yew tree,
and a goat fell in love with a country mermaid.
I heard that happiness is another form of agony,
and sorrow is the only thing that incubates hope.
A picture of a country without a god is a desert,
and the other day, my Ghanaian friend told me,
the night owls have taken the shrines of their gods.
They crow every night, and the people are happy.
because at least someone is crying out at long last.
2. Passing By a Lonely Graveyard One Evening
by Jonathan Ukah
A day came in this dreary and futile life of mine
I took it upon myself to pass through a graveyard
when the rain poured down in thick avalanches,
and there was no place to shelter or pass the time.
I walked through the grave of Mobutu Sese Seko,
and heard voices like children in a busy classroom.
I leaned forward to hear what they had to say,
amid the rapid rustling of dry leaves and wind,
The tall yew tree casts its shadow over the grave.
I heard him murmur to his inmates and birds,
that of all his glamour, wealth and fame in life,
no African country wanted his body on their soil,
as though he was infested with leprosy at death,
wondering how a continent of corruption and ruin
transformed into a saint at the stench of a body.
What would he have done if Morocco had kept silent,
and not asked for his corpse to drop in their land.
He forgot to approach life like a child playing a game,
moving and pushing pieces, possessing the power of kings.
Another voice in the air I heard was Sani Ahacha,
the strong man of Nigeria, leader of an oil nation,
killed in the years of abundance and peace,
mourned by the gold he kept under his pillow.
The day the army waited on him, he would not know
how his memory failed him when it mattered most.
How the people bundled him like unwanted leaves,
when he lost power like a man who lost breath,
the ejaculation of power, prominence and perpetuity.
The third voice reminded me of the fragility of Gaddafi,
the pomp, pride and pageant of Libya, the horn of Africa,
who commanded an empire of oil, an eternity of grandeur.
I heard the cutting edge of regret and anger in his voice,
wondering how possible it was for a strong man to die
surrounded by the whiteness of glory and its crudity;
touted as the sculpture of Africa, the polished gong,
through which his people blew the famous whistle of time.
He died as though his own image engulfed him,
in the hands of those who saw his light and darkness.
How quickly everything fades when light shifts its stance,
When the ego is the grave that buries the truth within.
3. My Father’s Blood
by Jonathan Ukah
I sat glum behind my father
the day the khaki men hit him at the back
with a sharp and pointed stick, a devil’s needle.
He winced, shook, cringed and trembled,
touched his back with his right hand and flinched;
pain seared through his body and heart
like Jesus during the agony at Calvary.
My father’s fingers were smeared with blood,
but he didn’t turn to see the faces of his attackers.
It was not needed, not what he bargained for,
though he knew them, and knew they were there,
waiting for him to ride his bicycle into their tracks.
I saw and felt a blazing knife slash his body;
my body stiffened, opened, torn and spilt blood,
my blood gushed from my arteries into the hot ground,
still reeling from the wounds of the dead.
Even the marks of the fallen tattooed the leaves.
I felt my father’s blood rush into my eyes,
and changed the things I see and their colours;
I felt my father’s blood seep into my ears,
clogging them with meaning and mood of what I heard;
my father’s blood ran through my veiny hands,
oiling my palms and fingers for what I touched,
and whatever I handled to steer my course;
I felt my father’s blood take over my feet,
directing me to the places that I must go.
Whatever that had a body and a face,
whatever that had a form and a purpose,
whatever that stood for what must be done,
whatever was a substance, and not a phantom,
whatever that embodied concreteness, whatever a body,
my father’s blood was there to take ultimate control.
By the reason of my father’s spilt blood,
I walked through the gates of the enemy in the dark,
the fourth dimension, the realm of the supernatural,
where his presence followed me through strongholds,
and through graves littered with ashes and dry leaves,
knowing the substances that went into their dying,
the fragrances that their decayed remains emitted.
How fear and timidity died in me, who was careful,
and I was reborn with this unholy, voluptuous anger,
that raged in me like a sinister snake, raw to the bone,
transforming a cat like me into a marvellous bulldog,
biting and stinging every flesh that crossed its path.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#jonathan-c-ukah
About Featured Poet Jonathan Ukah: Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart and Best of the Net-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in TABS, The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2025, and the Atlantis Poetry Prize 2026, the Sublimation Annual Poetry Contest 2026, and the Empyrean Poetry Contest 2026. His first Chapbook, A is for Anfang was released in December 2025 by the Island of Wak-Wak.
4. A Poem by Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan
Author's Bio
Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan (Toonday) writes from Oyo State, Nigeria. He works with Alternative bank. He is a lover of poetry; a lover of everything that breathes poetry. His works appeared / forthcoming in Pangolin Review, Wales Haiku, Ethel-Zine, Shallowtales Review, Stillwater Review, RoadRunnerReview, Lucent Dreaming etc.
A Qunut for Migrating Darkness
tell me about the homecoming harmattan / that arrives like a thousand needles / sewing dust into the seams of our night / tell me about the beetles of strange eyes / hatching the silence of the town / tell me about the bats that migrate without complaint / wearing the fullness of dark like first adhan / tell me how the Creator remains unmigrating / mighty & unmoved / while everything else learns the lexicon of leaving / even blood in your vessel migrates / corpse becomes compost / becomes creation / i am a fragment of those who won't let the night rest / i swallow a small war for dominion / that no sandglass has ever finished counting / science hasn't yet filmed our night dreams / nor found the pulse of being in the deadness of sleep / so i won't wait for space travellers to bring back photographs of God / before i believe / that in this settling dark / is a spectrum of being & unbeing / an orphaned light still learning the shape of its own name / i pour my gratitude & rage into the sightless space between heaven & heathen / into the underbrush where nothing asks to be untangled / into the clear path that only pretends it was always clean / [& when allowed] into my lover / & watch libation become liberation / like a small god / i seed myself into the dawning dark / & when the morning finally cracks me open / i do not break / i become the bird / falling into flight / kul aʿūdhu bi rabbil-falaq / for i have sought refuge in the Lord of the dawn
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#babatunde-waliyullah-adesokan
Poetry
5. Peter Adedire
Author's Bio
Peter Adedire works has appeared on Concio magazine, shortlisted for Brigette Poirson prize for Literature 2023, Co-author Song of Peace Anthology, Longlisted for Joe Ushie Poetry Prize for 2027 and presently working on its forthcoming poetry project themed on passionate love.
In a horse betting race, there is a horse called outsider
The painter dyed the cloud with deep black, chased the outdoor stars to their father's
room. Ebullient thunders clapped, cacography etched in lightning alphabet, market put
in disorder. Chaos was not ugly, anyways, a smile was put into buckets, there were
things that were not meant to live in the house,
translation should come in please:
I was tossed out of my mother to a town of dwarf bungalows, brown roof-
caps, old room-smells like secret sins. Mud houses usually open their epidermis to
laugh a joke cracked by downpour. Bleating in sitting room, two cats lizard the
wall, a liveborn was born, penury sang like a lyrebird. An old man put his lips on my ears:
"Do not come for him anymore,
River does not turn back to pick his belongings
Falling branches cannot communicate to trees they have left"
I was welcome, kisses, patting, pour in lavender
I was too hairy and eyes seems an ape
Papa and uncle skedaddled, mother died for drinking too much of my crying,
Grandma was happy when nobody came for my naming ceremony
But she cooked an aromatic onion, so many villagers were tempted to visit
At two, she wore me a christened ring, distracted me for following her
daughter's trail. At ten I have read almost all the library in my school and at people's
face. Voices, voices, of thousands petitions, deracination lives, decimated cities,
a shout to be rescue, a shout to be seen do not matters to our rulers,
We are the remnants called Outsider, caste of pariah, hustlers looking for an identity,
looking to submarine deep of the deepest trenches. Worst warm, wall of walls built
between us. Does Government know I exists?
Do people know grandma's pot is the coldest in the world?
I was almost lynched in Oshodi for carrying a baby, a heavy load
and heavy heart of my boss to her car,
Bummer lamb, Sergey Brim, Cano Cristales, Agbani Darego:
Outcast, bullied, different, a Nigerian!
At Missouri, I still love to teach Literature. A lyrebird must now sing for his students;
Every home is a home, an outsider does not have what he calls his own,
Every home is not my own, I have a home I called my own.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#adedire-peter
Poetry
6. Excel Chinagoram Michael
Author's Bio
Excel Chinagorom Michael is a Nigeria creative writer and graphics designer living in the suburbs of Aba. His writing explores the theme of identity, lifestyle, memory and human condition. He is the author of 'Girls Are Roses' published by Poemify Publisher Inc, 2020. His work has been published on Brittle Paper, The April centaur, The Razor Wire of Exile Anthology, Afrihill, and elsewhere. He is an Educationist.
Trauma
Violence falls on me once again & insists my body rally around pain which sorts me out
like trigonometry— a language that comes with our lineage.
Before now, grief settles in a circle
desiring to loop me like fire. I felt the bruise on my skin was not mine; it was lifting a hurt hidden in my father's heart.
Who has a stuffed ache in my head & dragged me back to the place of its first wound?
They gathered my delicate bones,
pounded them into mud & laid them
across the road awaiting a Volkswagen
to ruin me.
They left me vulnerable beside clamorous rivers filled with numbers,
like the algebra of trauma, reminding me of how we wept when we remembered Zion.
& here, I witness departure again & again in this twenty-first century. I will be like a boy returning a grief-playlist to those who have made a lexicon of loathing out from me.
This memory will tarry in the trenches of history, reminding them of the night they forced God from His throne without knowing the heaviness of grief hidden in every pregnant mother.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#excel-chinagorom-michael
Poetry
7. Obaji Godwin
Author's Bio
Obaji Godwin’s poems have appeared in Jaylit, Blasphemous Magazine, Doublespeaks Journal, unpopular Journal, Poetree,Tough Poets Review, Kaleidoscope III, Kalahari Review, Teambooktu, Tuck magazine, Ebedi Review, and in Soil Unfurling From Stem: An Anthology From Sub-Saharan Africa (edited by Bridgette James). He appeared in the shortlist of the 2017 Uganda Babishaiku Prize, as well as the 2018 Uganda Babishainiwe Poetry Prize Shortlist. He’s a two-time winner of the POETREE Poetry Prize, and was longlisted for 2025 Kayode Aderinokun Poetry Prize, 2027 Joe Ushie Poetry Prize, MNM Poetry Prize. His poems were shortlisted for 2025 Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize and Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize. His poems diagnose grief and cast conduits for its banishment.
Seeker
..a decade later 96 kidnaped
Chibok girls are still missing..
BBC NEWS
when I decant
my eyes
into my country’s flag
I see leas of lilacs
I canoodle it.
i fleck its tongue with honey-potted molasses.
when darts rise, I rise,
becoming a sentinel ready
to bleed
for its roots to remain rooted
yes, my country is a home
I am prepared to picket with my life.
but, now, I do not want to give an ounce
of my irises to the minutest emblem of this land
I am a troubadour
seeking what is lost
the lost things are dear to me, a volleyball mate. a football aficionado
she who dreams of sculpting chalets
in mars for us she who hankers to outstrip Ronaldo’s
outsize legacies
& these lost flowers were swallowed
by my country’s oversight
& in this land beautiful things still
walk into loss & this country stands akimbo
staring & staring like what is lost.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#obaji-godwin
Poetry
8. Tajuddean Kolawole
Author's Bio
Tajuddeen Kolawole is a thoughtful Nigerian poet, educationist and an aspiring academic with a passion for words, ideas, and human connection. From crafting heartfelt free verse poems to navigating academic research with depth and clarity, he blends intellect with emotion in both his writing and pursuits. He's a master graduate dedicated to growth; his interests span from education and communication to cultural expression and spiritual reflection. Tajuddeen brings warmth to language and purpose to every project, driven by curiosity, compassion, and an unshakable belief in meaningful work.
The Generals Are Not Always Right
Even the colonisers are confused just as you & I
They said the past of cry is cried and fried for fry
knelt for kneel, as feel and felt
but why is sight, sighted when fight is fought?
Though, we were colonised
there’s freedom of speech and thought
If drink is drank and sing is sang
why then is bring not brang but brought?
& patch is patched when catch is caught?
These are my views – opened to be overruled
Generals say the past for kill is killed and
bill is billed. There’s concern when cheat
is cheated and teach is taught
If I gave Moosa my pen yesterday, I say lent–
for the past and sent if a message was
disseminated two days ago. Lend is lent
send is sent but fend is fended
Think from my perspective you wise men of this court.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#tajuddeen-kolawole%C2%A0
Poetry
9. Solape Adetutu Adeyemi
Author's Bio
Solape Adetutu Adeyemi has published work in the New York Times, the Kalahari review, the Indianapolis Review and the Guardian to mention a few. She has degrees in Microbiology and Environmental Management and has a sweet tooth.
Face Me, I Face You
Twelve rooms.
Twelve large families.
Too many children to count.
Family planning clearly missed this address.
The landlord calls it a compound.
We call it a small local government.
One toilet.
One bathroom.
Shared by everybody.
Even visitors.
Every morning is an election.
Buckets line up before the owners wake up.
If your bucket no dey queue by 5 a.m., forget bathing. Go to work smelling like something the cat dragged in
The person inside the bathroom always has one line:
"I'm coming!"
Coming from where?
Nobody knows.
You can finish reciting Psalm 91, 121 and 23 before that door opens.
The toilet has seen things.
Things that should never happen to one innocent toilet.
Everybody claims innocence.
"It wasn't like this when I entered."
Of course.
Na spirits dey use am.
Children run everywhere.
One is crying.
One is fighting.
Three are naked.
Two are chasing a tyre.
One has just poured sand into somebody's pot of soup because "na play."
Their mothers?
Pregnant again.
The tap is another resident.
It brings out water once in a while just to remind us it still lives here.
The moment water starts running, the whole compound shouts,
"Water don come!"
Within thirty seconds, twenty buckets appear from nowhere.
Miracle.
Privacy died the day you rented this room.
If you quarrel with your husband at night, by morning the woman in Room Seven has already concluded that you're the problem.
In this compound, gossip travels faster than the wind.
Yet, somehow...
People still laugh.
Still borrow pepper.
Still share food.
Still watch each other's children.
Still survive. Still hope. One day e go better.
Poetry
10. Alabi Mezabo Miracle
Author's Bio
Alabi Mezabo Miracle is a poet and educator from Ekpesa, Edo State, Nigeria, and a law graduate of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. His works appear in The Bridgette James Poetry Literary Journal and The Art Lounge Poetry Magazine, with a recent shortlisting in the Popals Poetry Anthology.
My Village is a Pastor
The rasp on stone is our morning bell.
Before dawn could pull back the night's curtain, the old man whets his machete,
a slow, metallic hymn
to wake the farmer lying fallow in our bones.
Agbe m'olemude—barterers of morning across mud walls,
thick air, and the steam of oily akara.
Then the exodus begins.
A long number line of boots and iron feet,
marching down the green aisle,
singing the Uviae:
Chorus Leader:
Ume ni Ke ria Ekemana
Unyo no ko ukozi Za Ke
no ba eshe ni ki fi zi
Chorus Singers:
Swa e ni Fi zi Tara ba hi mi
Eki ma rio bi labia
Humming the chant as they are collected by the rainforest.
At eighty, my grandfather is the high priest.
Sun-baked, unbowed,
Even Obechi bows when he trudges by,
muck boots armed to the legs, sucking mud in the parish of cocoa shades,
conducting a mass harvest.
He hoists the sickle pole
with hands rough as broken Benin in harmattan,
slicing sturdy stems with a sudden pull,
cracking the pods to spill the beans.
He bends to scoop the stream water,
taking communion from the leaf-littered ground.
By noon, a lone tongue pierces the wind:
"Ehe O!"
And the congregation roars back from the swamp,
"OOO!"
A sweat-soaked verse across dense leaves.
The day hangs its shredded vestment.
We find our path again,
picking up stories like fallen mangoes,
our feet longing for a cold bath.
At home, elazor is served, brown and heavy,
with okra sauce escaping from our lips—
the savoury taste of a day's worship.
At twilight, Grandma mounts the pulpit
to usher in moonlight tales—
Awelu te Shi Shi or nyani ILo
Ama o Shu uvumi e bi ilahor he asha bo okpele be bu kpo
Onezeshe ne ema bo gbado o meh
Okekuleze i ki je eshe ne evelevele Na soh onina ah Bere
Ka u ya gbehe uteshishi wewe nu du gubele
Zozele no la me Kay Kay cha uyanu nya
Eshe ne osho bu cha Oke bere no kwaz zaye
Orzi na ya nu yna
Ohuo lo lo gbado ome shi vo,
songs braided with stories, drums summoning the crescent moon
keeping the earth awake.
We stumble home soon, almost breathless:
Makuze. Makuze. Good night.
A quiet benediction on the sleeping rust.
The cutlass rests in the door's pocket,
waiting for morning's sermon.
Glossary
Agbe m’olemude - A traditional morning greeting in the Okpamheri (Okpameri) language of Edo State, Nigeria.
Akara - Fried bean cakes, a popular breakfast food.
Uviae - A traditional farm-work chant sung communally while walking to or working on the farm.
Ehe O! - A call of greeting or acknowledgment, often used to hail workers from a distance.
OOO! - The customary response to Ehe O!, meaning “Well done” or “We hear you.”
Elazor - A dark steamed bean pudding, traditionally eaten with okra sauce.
Makuze - Good night.
Translations of Chants and Songs
Translation of the Uviae Chant
Chorus Leader: Farming is the work of our land. He who plants, harvests. He who breaks the pod feeds the clan.
Chorus Singers: I will not be lazy. My hands will work. My basket will be full.
Translation of the Chant-Fable
The ant is said to have no sight,
Yet it smells the honey across the yard.
It knows the season when the grain is ripe,
To gather before the cold winds blow.
Go to the ant, you sleeper of the mat,
Learn its quiet steps and be wise;
For when the rains of hunger come to flood the earth,
The wise man has stored his corn.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#alabi-mezobo-miracle
Poetry
11. Dave Tewari
Author's Bio
I enjoy literature and read a lot. Although I specialize in mundane economics,
I enjoy subtle things in life and now retired from work life.
Bliss of Brahman
Life I thought was as steel
But I found it nothing more than the dew
Worked hard to become someone
Who makes more money and brings more comforts home
Family grew, children came
Happiness blossomed and, in the process, I found myself old.
Now I feel duped
into doing the routine
from one life to another
running from cradle to grave
time and again.
Mysteries of the Universe and Life
Scoured for the Bliss of Brahman
To taste, and I pray to the Almighty to grant me that boon.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#dave-tewari
Poetry
12. Joy Okwori
Author's Bio
Joy Okwori is a storyteller who enjoys writing poems and short stories. She won the 2024 sage at words spoken word contest and is a fellow at Ebedi writers’ residency.
Why do we love things more than we love people?
Why do we love things more than we love people?
A young boy spent the night with his friends,
because the street was dark and quiet.
They cracked jokes and laughed heartily.
He was a good chef who made their stomachs happy,
but he left in the early hours of the morning
His friends whom he left,
raised an alarm about a missing phone.
They called him and he came running,
Smiles turned to frown.
Gentle words were replaced with curses.
They tagged his words a lie.
He was accused without evidence.
He said he was not a thief,
but they called him a liar.
They made their fists ready,
and turned him into a punching bag.
His pleas were met with rage and hate.
They called him gay.
They made him use spoon,
to fill a bucket with water.
They tied him upside down to a clothing line.
And before the sun went down,
his face was a hideous sight.
Of blood, swollen flesh and open cuts.
But they did not stop.
They pulled his cornrows off his scalp.
They said they are both the law and the Government.
They took him up a mountain to torture him some more,
By the time they brought him down
he was half dead.
By the time the phone was found,
he was already dead.
Social media was on fire.
The news said that a young man was killed
because he was accused of taking a phone.
He wasn’t killed by strangers.
His life was taken by those he trusted.
Why do we love things more than
we love people?
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#joy-okwori
Poetry
13. Yuwinn A. Kraukamp
Author's Bio
Yuwinn A. Kraukamp, a bilingual writer from the coastal corner of Cape Agulhas, South-Africa, was placed third in the 2026 Bridgette James Poetry competition. He’s a natural born creative, a former English— and Communications major at the university of the Western Cape, and a patron (saint) of everything that’s artistically unique and beautifully weird in this world. Yuwinn has worked as a freelance columnist for Network 24, and a freelance journalist for The Southern Post Newspaper since 2022. In 2024 he was the third-place winner of the Diana Ferrus poetry prize, and in 2026 he was the first-place winner of the Njabulo S. Ndebele-themed ‘Rediscovering the Ordinary’ poetry competition. Both his English and Afrikaans poetry has appeared on various platforms such as Litnet, PEN Afrikaans and Versindaba; and has been published within poetry anthologies such as and The Avbob Poetry Project.
There is something wrong with our water
“They have deliberately left us here to kill each other.”
—G. Ndhlovu, on violence in African townships. Taylor & Francis, March 2024.
~
There is a cup on our table
a non-consecrated aluminium chalice
filled with just enough water
to keep every person in my family
from dying of thirst
my father takes the first sip
my mother fills her mouth, passes it to my sister
who offers it to my brothers
by the time the cup gets to me
there is nothing but blood left in it.
We drink as much as the living are allowed
in a graveyard like this
but there is something in this water: ashes
and stones, and human bones
and deceased Gods who couldn’t adapt to local droughts
the last rites and first names of slain children
who couldn’t unswallow the easy death
that fills our daily cups.
We drink as much as the living are allowed
but I swear to you there is something wrong with this water
and there are limits to how much grief
a body can swallow in one lifetime
how much hunger and unholiness you can hide inside yourself
before my body remembers that it
is drowning.
And by the time I swallow the last drop
I am no longer a child. How can I be?
when I can no longer taste anything
other than blood.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#yuwinn-kraukamp
A Translated Igbo Poem
14. By Chidebelu Emmanuel Nnazoba
Author's Bio
Chidebelu Emmanuel Nnazoba is an Igbo Nigerian poet, playwright, and novelist. His work appears in Penned in Rage Literary Journal and its 2026 Winners Anthology. He received the 2026 Poetic Assassin Literary Prize.
Ọnụ Ụzọ Nke Chekwabara Ịgbachi Nkịtị Gị
(The Door That Kept Your Silence)
Ị rahụrụ n’ala mba ọ̀zọ́
ma ị hụghị ụtụtụ ọ̀zọ́
Ụbọchị atọ,
ọnụ ụzọ áhụ̀ chekwabara ịgbachi nkịtị gị.
Ikekwe ekwentị gị kụrụ
n’akụkụ ihe ndina gị.
Ma eleghị anya, a kpọrọ aha gị,
ma nzaghachi abịaghị.
Anọ m ebe a,
na-atụ anya na ị ka dị ndụ
n’ebe áhụ̀,
ebe anyị na-apụghị iru.
Mgbe ahụ, ha kụwara ọnụ ụzọ áhụ̀.
Ha chọtara gị n’ime,
ụbọchị atọ ka ume ikpeazụ gị gachara.
Obalum
Aha gị ghọrọ ọnụ ụlọ
m na-apụghị ịbanye.
Ejiri m ihe niile m nwere
kpọghachite gị n’ụlọ.
Ị hapụrụ ụlọ na ndụ,
ma ị lọghachiri n’ụlọ
na-enweghị okwu n’ọnụ gị.
Kemgbe ahụ, ụlọ na-ada ụda dị iche.
M ka na-ele ụra anya
dị ka ihe na-adịru nwa oge,
dị ka ọnụ ụzọ anyị na-agafe
ma si n’akụkụ nke ọzọ pụta.
Ma gị gafere,
mechie ọnụ ụzọ áhụ̀.
Mgbe ụfọdụ, ana m échè
ihe nrọ ikpeazụ gị bụ.
Ma ụtụtụ
amalitelarị ịkpọ gị
n’àzụ́ nku anya gị?
Ị maara n’oge áhụ̀ dị mkpirikpi
na ị na-apụ apụ?
Akpọghachiri m ahụ gị n’ụlọ.
Ma enweghị m ike
ịkpọghachite gi, nwanne m nwoke.
The Door That Kept Your Silence
You slept in a foreign land
and never woke up.
For three days,
the door kept your silence.
Perhaps your phone rang
by your bedside.
Maybe your name was called
and no reply came.
I was here,
hoping you were alive
somewhere out there,
somewhere we could not reach.
Then they broke down the door.
And they found you there,
three days after your last breath.
Obalum
Your name became a room
I couldn't enter.
I used everything I had
to take you home.
You left home alive
but came back home
with no sound in you.
Ever since,
home sounds different.
To me, sleeping
is only temporary,
a door that we walk
through and back again.
But you passed through
and shut the door.
Sometimes I try to guess
what your last dream was.
Was morning
already calling
for you behind your eyelids?
Did you know in that split second
that you were leaving?
I took your body home.
I couldn't bring you home, my brother.
Poetry
15. Eve Bogusz
Author's Bio
Cape Town based artist, who has worked as a project manager, and done film work for 30 years. She started writing In 2020.
Sirens
We hear the Sirens whining in the distance
It’s a Friday night in the Mother City,
This beautiful place, full to the brim with contrasts
Lush in places, barren in between
Where opulence and famine live side by side.
Cape Town that quintessential pleasure resort
Our own special freshwater station
The canals that used to flow down Devils peak, though
through Kanaldorp into Adderley street,
have all dried up or been diverted.
All our treasures have gone underground.
The sweet water slips to the sea now, hidden from view,
We know she’s there,
We just can’t seem to tap into her as we should.
It’s a Friday night in Cape Town and murder rides the wind.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#eve-bogusz
Poetry
16. Gabriella Garofalo
Author's Bio
Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of these books: “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Casa di erba”; “Blue Branches”; “A Blue Soul”, “After The Blue Rush”.
To Y.
I’ll be honest, it was just a bloody mix-up,
You fancied yourself quite the romantic heroine,
Armed with laundry and a teenage crush,
Head over heels in love with a stranger from the waves,
Thinking, ‘Yes, this is the one’-
Not, God forbid, a strapping young man from your island,
No, you went crazy over a bearded castaway
Washed ashore like driftwood-
Ah, the unsuitable desire for a vagrant reeking
Of seaweed and deceit-
And blue waves crashed against the shingle,
While a young princess weighed the right procedure
For rescuing naked men on laundry day-
He, a man of blood and deceit, hewn by Poseidon’s wrath
Until his pride was just a shadow, bruised, naked,
His entrance worthy of a master strategist-
You wanted a hero to love, he a hot meal,
Maybe a ship, and no, not for him your love,
Your embroidered frocks, he just wanted Ithaca,
And the blood of suitors dripping from his bow-
Look, Nausicaa, the man knew it only too well,
To touch your limbs was to betray the sea,
To disown the stony island,
So he grabbed the cloth, and hid his naked shame-
Meanwhile, blue waves crashed against the shingle,
Indifferent to this crazy farce,
The king of tricksters playing the helpless waif,
A young princess buying every single word,
Both of them shaking upon a tide,
Unfit to hold the blue wreckage of desire-
Ah, well, I guess that’s what happens
If a girl shows up against the blue roar of the tide
To stalk like a siren's song old men yearning
For a way back, yearning to be the stone
Waves finally choose to leave alone.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#gabriella-garofalo
Poetry
17. Majesty Ojochegbe Joseph
Author's Bio
Majesty Ojochegbe Joseph is a speaker, writer, and dedicated advocate for youth movements. He derives immense peace from his pen and paper, as it is through this medium that he expresses his innermost thoughts and reflections.
To Bless the Whip
Take me back to bitter days
where I would cry for what I eat.
Take me back to better days
where I would smile for what I bleed for.
Take me back to my blessed land of Egypt,
where in its field I had spirit in my soul,
and in its anguish I had flesh on my bones.
Slap me out of this heaven
where there is no cost for grain,
where there is no blood for wine.
Hold me so I will fall,
kiss my lips, let me rupture.
My throat is on fire.
Give me peace.
~
Who took my peace?
Who took my peace?
Who taught me to bless the whip?
Shareable Link: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#majesty-ojochegbe-joseph%C2%A0
Poetry
18. Nattie O'Sheggzy
Author's Bio
Oyetunji Olusegun Alabi — pen name: Nattie O'Sheggzy — is a Nigerian poet born in Lagos and shaped by his experiences in Ikire-Ile. Trained in geography and surveying, his poetry explores memory, eros, mortality, and history through surreal, spatial and elemental imagery. His work has appeared in BigCityLit, Sandy River Review, Agape Review, Heroin Love Song, Gigantic Tentacles Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of Random Imaginations and is currently completing a third poetry collection.
Double-tailed Nekomata
Paddling through the puddle whose mud
holds the shape of light, a cat
wondrously shy of smoke bears the fire.
She is arrayed in flames
in her former life. Her paws imprint ash
over the velvety seabed. There are brighter days
she neither meows nor mulls, the rat
holed in the attic. Hollowed cries stuffed
by the walls' hem the light at the centre
of fear. Scars crab the window panelling, peeling
the beam of silence — a brimful outflow.
They called her Nekomata, double-tailed
in the Stone Age, long before her resurrection.
She was not created a monster; she had lived
long enough to remember what mortals had forgotten —
a cat that existed long before a spark
kindled the hearth and heart of man.
What if only this feline, foraging in the forest,
understood the pain undoing other animals?
Drawn to the call of desire across
borders between worlds. Nekomata
becomes neither the living nor the loving
but their memory, with two tails
dragged into the void behind her.
X
by Nattie O'Sheggzy
Every time I am reborn, burnished,
Immersed in the sunrise of laughter,
I become the eastern glow steeped in mist.
In the squall and the storm I remember everything
You unsay. The long pause between phrases stanches
My lips. Warm rain jabs at my throat amid the din
Of the silence stitching itself to your words.
Sparrows lure me to prise open the soul of the sun
You bear like an egg in a golden tye.
FRACTURE
by Nattie O'Sheggzy
I dived inside of me.
What genie leapt forward
when cobwebs
slabbed shut the curvy light?
Why do dark dimples began
to grow like carpet-
grasses crawling clumsy
and curious?
They became the vomited
black children woken
up too late by yoghourt and milkshake.
Why did my cracked ribs creak?
We hadn't done with each other yet
before night swept away
the critters like crumbs
left on the mahogany table.
I screamed at the billowing clouds
maybe the pain could
play piano in my ears.
but silence seemed weightier in my arms.
That split second I adored did not wear out pain.
Pain, in truth, could not be replicated
by striving to overcome the pang,
unlike the rhythm of consciousness.
I tried several times to defang
the wound, and mould a cavity,
a socket to keep the calm in
to make sure I sealed it in
squarely within the jaws of my kitchen windows.
A thousand unnameable things harbour hurts,
even in silence I know this.
Shareable Link: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#nattie-osheggzy
Poetry
19. Bruce Wekesa
Author's Bio
Bruce is a poet currently pursuing his education science degree in the University of Nairobi. He is an ardent poet and writer not published yet, but he is exploring options on the same
The Bleeding Pen
My pen won't stop bleeding
not ink, but what my mouth couldn't utter
It spills in silence —
what my heart whispers
what my chest holds tight
I need a page that won't fly
when winds whistle,
won't tear up when my pen's tip rips it,
won't be afraid to nurse its wounds,
strong enough to hold the drops
my pen holds
and mould them words.
And when the drops finally fall
heavy as they weigh
deep as they sink
they'll mark the lines with pain
but at least they'll be out
learning how to be ink instead of blood.
Poetry
20. Alex Alieu Kamara
Author's Bio
Alex Alieu Kamara is a Sierra Leonean born in the westernmost part of the country. He hold a BA In Political Science and International Relations from the University of Makeni.
I Want To Write About You
Yesterday,
I sat down to write
about you.
I found out
it is not easy
to write about you.
The lights went out.
My pages became sticky.
My pen refused to move.
I tried,
but my brain failed
to process the fitting diction—
the diction that fits your aura.
My mind reminded me
that I have never encountered
such gracefulness.
Not in my pre-mortality,
not in my days here on earth.
You stand out.
Yet, I still don't know
how to write all this—
how to write that
the sound of your name
brings peace.
Since I knew you,
I have only known ease.
And I hate to think
of how much I would miss you
if you ever vanished
from my space.
I wish I could write about you.
I would have deified you,
mystified you,
beautified you.
But perhaps
that is the problem—
I want to write about you.
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#alex-alieu-kamara
Poetry
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Essay
Oluseyi Ogunbanwo
Author's Bio
Essayist Oluseyi Ogunbanwo Joseph is a trained Social Worker from the University of Lagos, a writer, poet, and counsellor whose works explore faith, morality, and the human experience. Passionate about literature and learning, he develops educational materials and creative writings that inspire, instruct, and enrich readers across generations.
Wisdom of the Elders
'Ìwà rere l'èsó Ènìyàn'
This phrase translates into English as: 'Good character is the finest adornment of a human being'.
We Yorubas, of Western Nigeria, use character to define a person, whatever his standing. A man of good character is held in high esteem. And to us, whatever a person claims to be, however skilful he is at his job, if he lacks good character, his profession or skill is useless.
'Iwa l'ewa'
'Character determines beauty'.
It is as much as to say that one's beauty is seen in one's character. Consequently, however peerless you are in beauty, a bad character makes you appear as an ugly beast.
Now what is 'Iwa rere?'
Well, it is not relative. Good character is a good character. It is measured in many ways and exhibited in various forms. It goes beyond the mere act of munificence. Someone can be generous yet still lack good character. Generosity, sometimes, may emanate from a compelling need or a sympathetic disposition.
It is the ability to maintain a benign disposition at all times. It is exercising restraint in the face of provocation. It is denouncing falsehood and affirming the truth, whoever is involved. It is doing one's duty as expected and fulfilling the task for which one is employed.
It is the display of moral uprightness. It is doing good to both friends and perceived foes.
Empathy is an indispensable ingredient of good character. The ability to own up to one's mistakes and offer an apology without restraint is the hallmark of a good character, and that is, irrespective of one's position.
Some believe it is wrong for parents to apologise for wrongs done to their children. I disagree. Whatever the child's age. It simply amounts to good character.
And guess what? Good character is learnt from home. Family and community socialisation teach it.
Though we now live in an age of moral decadence, ours used to be a community of people of diverse religions, educational qualifications and societal standing that believed in good character as the only index of socialisation. Training of the child and the young was not exclusive to their parents. Society served as a caregiver even when parents were within reach.
As a Counsellor, I realised that Home Training is the instrument of socialisation and an indispensable tool that parents employed in moulding the child to a standard approved by the community.
In the training of children, Caregivers are aware of the negative implications of labelling a minor as 'abi-iko' (birthed but untrained) or'ako-igba' ( he who rejected home training). The former is a direct indictment on the parents for failing to provide supportive care and socialisation of their wards, while the latter presents a recalcitrant child who contumaciously rejected the moral training offered by his parents.
Whichever way, parents are held liable for their children's indecent behaviour in society.
The word 'Iwa' is a noun that can be attached to other words to form phrases indicating different meanings. For example:
-
'Iwa irele' - a humble disposition.
-
'Iwa omoluwabi' - the deeds of a well-trained child, and so on
On the other side are:
-
'iwa ika - the act of wickedness
-
'iwa anikanjopon' - selfish behaviour
-
'iwa ainitiju' - a shameless disposition
-
'iwa agidi' - a stubborn comportment...just to mention a few.
It is more honourable to do good than to pretend to be good with an underlying negative intent.
Yorubas, like every other tribe, believe 'no act of goodness or wickedness will go unrewarded'. (A t'ore a t'ika, ikan kii gbe') They believe in the principles of sowing and reaping. However long your good or evil is, assuredly there is a corresponding reward before you leave the earth.
Do you know that Yoruba people hardly speak ill of the dead? But then, the effect of the deceased's character outlives him, so much that the children or family becomes the beneficiaries of his character trait after his demise.
The Yorubas hardly forget the good character of a dead man. They reciprocate such good gestures towards his children or family. Similarly, the family of a man of bad character would have themselves to blame after his demise.
“Whichever way, people hardly forget the 'Ìwà'
a man exhibited even after his death.”
— Oluseyi Ogunbanwo
My Mother once told me a story: She claimed that on the day of my child's naming ceremony, a relative gave me a specific name. But the name was rejected by all in attendance because that was the name of the man who had sacked my Uncle where he previously worked. My uncle and some of his friends who knew the man said that the man was choleric, mean and wicked. They believed that the name would reflect unpleasant memories. Consequently, the name was rejected by my father.
It's interesting how a person's name is synonymous with his inordinate character. And this brings us to a new chapter in this discourse. People's names or aliases sometimes depict the personality behind those names.
One instance where a name has become a nickname for anyone tough, unsmiling and unfriendly is in the case of a former unsmiling and unfriendly Nigerian Military man who held the position of second-in-command and whose personality was feared.
There is no doubt that 'ìwà rere l'èsó ènìyàn'.
'Ìwà rere l'èsó Ènìyàn'
Toto ose bi owe, eyin Agba ori platform yi, e darijimi.
(It is indeed a proverb; elders on this platform, kindly permit my ignorance).
Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#oluseyi-ogunbanwo
Photography
Author's Bio
Ahmad is a Nigerian poet and writer, and a graduate of Sociology. His work is is shaped by a curiosity about people and society, especially the contradictions we live with.
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The Aloe Vera
This aloe vera was planted by my wife in her little garden at home. It caught my attention because of how much life she has managed to create in such a small space. I took the photograph as a quiet record of something she planted and cared for.
The Statue in the Garden
I took this photograph at the Nigeria National Library, Kaduna. It is a place I visit regularly. I have always found the statue interesting, it is a quiet reminder of what a library is really about: people, books and the patience to sit with an idea.
The Resting Cow
This was one of the cows I was keeping. After grazing with the others, it stopped to rest while the herd moved on. I liked the stillness of the moment. Nothing dramatic was happening; the cow had simply finished its business for the day and was taking its rest.
The Man with the Boa Constrictor
This boa constrictor had been sneaking into our poultry and eating chickens. One day, some of the workers finally caught it. I summoned enough courage to get close and take a photograph with it. I was curious, but I was also very aware of what was wrapped around me.
The Horse Rider
Whenever I travel to my roots in Abaji, I make time to walk around and reconnect with the place. On this particular day, I decided to do something different and took a ride on a horse. My cousin took the photograph, capturing a simple moment of me enjoying the familiarity and freedom of home.
Shareable Link: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#ahmad-gani
Photography
Peter Adedire
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Author's Bio
Peter Adedire works has appeared on Concio magazine, shortlisted for Brigette Poirson prize for Literature 2023, Co-author Song of Peace Anthology, Longlisted for Joe Ushie Poetry Prize for 2027 and presently working on its forthcoming poetry project themed on passionate love.
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Lush field with dwarf trees
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Group of palm trees laughing together
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Shareable Link: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#leo-phonet
Photography
Foday Mansaray
These photos were taken in Koinadugu District, Sierra Leone, on my way to “Alkalia”, commonly known as “Kuranko London.” Alkalia is a major town among the Kuranko people, one of Sierra Leone’s ethnic groups, hence the name “Kuranko London.”
The photos were taken along the road leading to Alkalia.
Shareable Link: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#foday-mansaray
Art
Kumbukani chawinga
Author's Bio
Kumbukani Chawinga is a pencil artist, poet and a violinist from Malawi.
https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#kumbukani-chawinga
18. Musician Tamba Johnson
Tell us about yourself
I'm Tamba S. Johnson. My stage name is Yaanie. I'm a Liberian Sierra Leonean. My father is from Liberia, and my mother is a Sierra Leonean from Kailahun district kissy Teng chiefdom My father is from Lofa County. I sing and rap in my native languages are Kissi, Liberian Koloqua, Krio and English.
How do you use your music to represent your community?
I use my music to educate my people and to speak about our daily lives, struggles, our culture and traditions. I'm not making much money from my music. But I'm not discouraged about that I keep pushing still.
Shareable Link: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#tamba-johnson
Featured Writer
Interview Conducted by Brett Anderson
Meet Roshnee: South African poet finding space for her words to soar
My name is Brett “Fish” Anderson and I am a writer and poet and improviser from Cape Town, South Africa. My most recent poetry book, titled, ‘Not water, JUST ICE!’ was released earlier this year through my engagement as part of a WhatsApp Poetry group called ‘Lit in Literature’, a space where poets from around South Africa share poems based on daily prompts that are dropped in the group.
One of these poets I have been connected to for that feels like the longest time is Roshnee Govender. We have enjoyed each other’s work and even co-created a few poems as part of some challenges that were created for Lit in Literature and are fans and cheerleaders of each other’s work.
So I thought I would take this opportunity to interview Roshnee and hear about some of her journey into the world of poetry and seeing her own books in print.
Let’s begin by asking, who is Roshnee Govender?
I have always been a writer, scribbling in multiple notebooks, scraps of paper, my phone and everywhere else. It is only recently that I chose bravery over fear, to bring my passion into the public eye through my book The Moon Child. Brave, because I was terrified of how my thoughts in a public forum would be viewed by family, friends and other readers. Writing is therapeutic, even if it just for one’s own self.
I am an Earth Child at heart, accountant by career (we fall into career paths by decisions that are taken out of necessity) - if it was a decision of passion, I would have been a nature conservationist. I find inspiration in nature, with my camera which is always on hand to capture the magic around me. My love for words, poetry and storytelling has taken me on a journey of self-expression, growth and connection.
My two poetry collections, The Moon Child and Chasing Petals in the Sun, published through Sakura Book Publishing, reflect different parts of my writing journey.
My writing journey has been shaped by the guidance and support I have received along the way and I am very appreciative of the importance of the people who inspire us to embrace change and become better versions of ourselves.
As part of the Paper Trail Literary Press writing community, known as “The Lit in Literature”, I continue to be inspired through daily writing and connecting with fellow writers. My latest contribution includes two poems featured in their collaborative anthology, We Are Because We Are, which brings together the voices of writers and highlights the importance of community, shared stories and the power of words.
For me, writing is about bringing words to emotions, finding joy even in pain, and creating moments of solace and peace. “I write for you and for me, I write about you and I.”
I asked Roshnee a number of questions to dig a little deeper into her poetry journey:
# When/Where/How were you inspired to write?
Words have always been my forte – public speaking and writing comes easily to me, often being called to be the speaker at family and friend functions. Writing became my therapy, and my healing along the way. I have an eye for the “unusual” at the everyday things around me, and these all become my inspiration.
# As children who read, books are always these magical kinds of items that mysterious entities somewhere out there are probably responsible for and we likely don't give it much thought. But now you have your poetry featured in a book/books [The Moon Child, Chasing Petals in the Sun, Anthology Poetry is not dead, a friend submission in No Water Just Ice, and Anthology We are because we are].
Talk us through a little bit of your journey of that mystical magical out-there thing becoming a reality for you...
I always believe that occasionally, there is a Blue Moon, and the magic it brings. Seriously though, I look for the magic in life, the synchronicities that bounce my way – the moon, the sun and the stars bring me joy. I am very aware that there is a greater Divine force driving my existence, and I never take that opportunity to become one with the Universe lightly.
Writing poetry and having these published, in book and online platforms has been an amazing journey thus far – the joy of seeing my book in the hands of other readers is amazing. What has made my journey more magical, is that some of my poetry has been turned into songs and is playing on all streaming sites – to hear my poetry in a song, it is just WOW.
# A lot of your poetry contains difficult or painful subject matter and much of that is personal. How has expressing some of your story in poetry helped or hindered your own healing? Do you ever feel like there is a cost to writing about painful things or more of a reward?
Does all poetry not root out of pain? It is what gives our rambling thoughts some structure through words. Writing has helped me to let go of the pain – now that the words are out there in public, it seemed silly to continue to hold on to the pain, and it became easier to heal.
The cost of writing about painful things is expensive – it opens you up to more judgement, from those that first hurt you, and then some new small-minded people. However, as you interact with people that find solace in your words, you realise that benefit vs the cost is greater.
# Walk us through a little bit of the journey of the Lit in Literature Whatsapp poetry group. How did you find out about it, when did you get involved, and how has it been part of that group of dedicated creators added to your life and writing experience?
Ekta Somera and I tripped over a social media page – not over poetry for sure. Our chats led us to the writing, and I was invited to join the poetry group – biggest catapult of my writing development. I found a safe space; to write without negative judgement but peer critical support pushed me out of my comfort zone, forcing me to let my words fly without restraint. The group is a great place to start for those who love poetry, love to write, and are finding a home to get started in, then the group is ideal.
# You have now published two books, ‘The Moon Child’ and ‘Chasing Petals in the Sun’. Can you give us a brief glimpse into each of those? And also how your words even travelled beyond book form.
The Moon Child was written from a place of pain and a path of growth. What began as my own story became a collection that speaks to the emotions and experiences many people carry, who cannot always find the words to express. The book takes readers through the phases of the moon, exploring the journey from darkness to light.
My second book, Chasing Petals in the Sun, is a photographic poetic travel journal inspired by a road trip through South Africa. From the City of Gold to Namaqualand, what started as a journey to see the Namaqualand daisies became a detour through towns, cities and moments of beauty captured along the way.
Beyond poetry, my words have also found expression through music. Under, my name, Padmini Roshnee Govender, I have poems turned into songs, and available on multiple streaming platforms through the Soul Whisperer label, with more to be released soon.
# Who were some of the people and What were some of the moments in your own writing journey that feel significant in terms of helping shape the path you took and keeping you motivated and believing in yourself?
The universe orchestrates the meeting of souls, who make dreams come true. For me it has been Ekta Somera, who worked on my book The Moon Child, under the guidance of publisher Alta H Haffner, from Sakura Book Publishing. Both women are dynamic in their own way and have helped me nurture my writing in various platforms. And also Mohamed Faruk Hoosain, whose reflection features in The Moon Child.
My husband Sydney and children Revashni and Kevashan have been my ardent supporters, cheering from the sidelines – allowing me to write and then sharing my public moments with my book launches.
# What place do you think writing has in the world or is it just a hobby that some people have to help them pass the time?
I don’t think writing will not make you rich overnight, so money cannot be a motivator for writing. Writing is personal and it a passion that drives a person. While it does seem like writing is like passing time, it is heart and soul driven. There are days, the creativity flows, and on other days, it is a slump and nothing is coherent. Writing is not AI – it must be the individual’s own emotions, experiences, words and thoughts that bring life to the piece.
# What is next for you with regards to writing? Any big dream or idea that seems too big but that keeps coming to mind or are you already working on your next big thing?
I still have a lot of drafts that need to be shared with my publisher. I have had a bit of “edit slump” recently – while everything needs to be written, it needs to be shared in the correct space and genre, so I am busy trying to catalogue my work.
What is exciting though – many of my poems has been turned to music – Padmini Roshnee Govender, under The Soul Whisperer & Soul Whisperers Poetry to Music Label.
A long-term project is a one-day biography – I always say if I write my life story, it may just be a bestseller – the journey has been a rollercoaster to where I am today.
My books, The Moon Child and Chasing Petals in the Sun are available online and the poetry anthology, We Are Because We Are is available from the Paper Trail Literary Press at thepapertrailza@gmail.com
"My Poetry turned to Music is available at Spotify and all other streaming sites –
Go find me at Padmini Roshnee Govender under
The Soul Whisperer & Soul Whisperers Poetry to Music Label."
Yes, our country is full of potholes; yet within it, we are a melting pot of cultural diversity and unity. Everything distinctive is truly south African. I am always cognizant of our painful history, but hopeful that we will find peace with the pain and joy in the new future. It does feel though that our "together" moments are building momentum. Shareable URL: https://ellaspoems.com/edition6octobertodecember2026#roshnee-govender