Àkòdì Òrìṣà artists
Àkòdì Òrìṣà artists painting the outside fence at Ile Ife, Nigeria.
Interested in some of my published works?
Follow Me
Àkòdì Òrìṣà artists painting the outside fence at Ile Ife, Nigeria.
This is too easy, right?
Do you see this person?
It’s easy to see who is hiding in the picture and what the fellow is doing, isn’t it?
I wonder.
TWO ROCK STARS
ROCK 1:
I wish I were a rock of salt.
Then I won’t be so insulted.
Here I sit at the bottom of the stream
pelted by water
pecked by fishes
pinched by crabs
unseen, uncelebrated by man
useless to him and his art.
I wish I were a rock of salt
Captive No More
1
What you are reading is not poetry. It is not fiction. It is my true family history.
I am an ascendant from slavery. Yes.
It means I am a descendant of enslaved bodies. Yes.
Inside me, they locked iron collars,
leg fetters, and hand lockers. Yes.
Yes. Does it sound weird? Yes.
Slavery was real in Africa. Yes
Africa was the Ground Zero of slavery. Yes.
Two of my work hanging in the exhibitions‘Wole Soyinka: Antiquities Across Times and Place’ in Haiti, curated by Awam Amkpa of New York University.
This is one of the paintings I just discovered in my garage.
The painting celebrates Robert Hayden’s poem, “Middle Passage.”
It is a really long poem.
The painting focuses on this excerpt:
“That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her: ”
The character across the floor of the ship being whipped to consent is the lady called Guinea Rose in the poem.
I am joyful today that I gave birth to a new baby.
As a writer, I am always very happy to see my new book in print.
A book is like a child: it takes a lot of work to raise a child.
But the credit for raising a child doesn’t belong to the parents only: the community also supports the parents as they raise the child from infancy to adulthood.