ABUJA – In celebration of World Poetry Day on March 21st, 2023, the World Poetry Movement (WPM) in collaboration with Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation celebrated special commemorative poetry, reading, and dialogue, themed “Poetry as a Pathway to National Consciousness”.
The event which was held virtually was hosted by , the National Coordinator of World Poetry Movement Nigeria, Mr. Paul T. Liam. The event had special guests speakers, notably poet and fiction writer Prof E.E. Sule, Continental Coordinator of the World Poetry Movement in Ghana Dr. Ayo Ayoola-Amale, Country Director of the Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation, Mr. Odoh Diego Okenyodo, and other discussants from Nigeria, Ghana and Germany.
Conversations held spanned Poetry as a Pathway to National Consciousness and how Nigerian poets read their poems on their lamentations. Prof E.E. Sule, in his presentation titled “Poetry As An Act”, said “the notion of poetry as an act collapses a poet’s private and public character so that we dispel the thoughts of a private poem being distinct from a public poem. “In my view,” said Sule, “there is no such thing as a private poem often said to be a poem dealing with private issues as against a public poem which is a poem dealing with public issues. A poem instead is a private-public act with a capacity to embrace all aspects of life.”
From his presentation, the professor of African Literature and Cultural Studies at the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Nigeria, further buttressed that poetry can engineer national consciousness in which poets without compromising their crafts can think of writing poetry that can act on individuals that choose their consciousness.
Also, Dr. Ayo Ayoola-Amale stated that good governance and the reward of honesty and truth are veritable ways that national consciousness can be encouraged. She said, “National literature should address issues around Nigeria and promote national consciousness and assume responsibility. We can raise national consciousness and social awareness through literature and building our national literature.”
Mr. Odoh Diego Okenyodo further stated that there has been a push for Poetry for development and that we are in a state of building national consciousness which is quite tasking because there are different nations in Nigeria and the real opportunity for poetry, its brevity, its ability to squeeze into very little space compared to novel.
He also added that the Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation has been organising poetry and short-short story competitions for young social media users as a tool to create social consciousness with support from the MacArthur Foundation through Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD). The competition has further improved the minds of young social media users in using their act as a tool for Anticorruption, Accountability, and Transparency.
Others who performed their poems and had a discussion on them included: Dr. Peace Longdet, Mr. Bash Amuneni, and Dr. Ola Ifaimehin, Mr. Michal Musialowski, and Dr. Saddiq Dzukogi, author of the award-winning collection, Your Crib, My Qibla.
The contributors concluded that poetry can be used as a Pathway for National Consciousness if only the poet is brave enough to use his/her act without compromising and writing poetry that can change other minds.
World Poetry Movement will be collaborating with Splendors of Dawn and other organisations to create events and activities that will bring about National consciousness in Nigeria, Jackson Odeh, Project Officer, Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation said in a statement.
Splendors of Dawn is a registered non-profit, non-governmental organisation registered in 2011 in Ghana and and 2013 in Nigeria, with international diasporan correspondents and members globally. The organization’s objective is to promote peace and harmony using the arts, to use poetry for positive social change, to promote a culture of peace and to inculcate a lifelong love of learning and reading with the vision of excellence through poetry as the highest, most complete expression of truth and beauty. Splendors of Dawn uses poetry to engage social issues. We are an education-driven foundation geared towards inculcating the culture of reading, poetry, culture of peace and character education.
World Poetry Movement is a coordination of organizations and poets: international poetry festivals, educational projects and poetry publishing houses, and more than 2,000 poets from 150 nations on all continents.
Its task is to coordinate and give effectiveness and permanence to the conjunction of international and local projects in all continents, projected towards a multicultural humanity, acting in a synchronized way, through actions whose axis is the social projection of poetic expression.
The thematic cores of its work are: Peace and reconstruction of the Human Spirit / Involvement and recovery of nature / Unity of human spirit and cultural diversity of the peoples / Material poverty and spiritual wealth / Actions towards the globalization of poetry.
