PROFILING ADEEKO IBUKUN (NIGERIA) #BABISHAI2015 SHORTLIST

Adeeko Ibukun lives and writes from Abeokuta, Nigeria. His works has been published in different journals and anthologies including the Sentinel Annual Literary Anthology (SALA, 2012). His poem, Breathing History, was awarded the second place in the Sentinel All African Poetry competition, 2012. He is currently working on his first book of poems.

His shortlisted poem is below:

A ROOM WITH A DROWNING BOOK  by Adeeko Ibukun (Nigeria)

Somewhere in the room a book is drowning, the floor

is shivering with pages. You said the spine is the balance

to our two winged hearts. Sometimes it’s the light knitting

its letters to our hearts. I see how things hold us in their lights

so we aren’t here or there like you’re here and somewhere

a lover holds you in her heart, light in water teaching these lessons.

Sometimes something holds clearly what we couldn’t say in words.

We face it to learn our silence and that again becomes part of

our languages. Places own us like this, light bounces off them,

turning their spears at me. Our hearts beat now and vision takes

its shapes—the stream of consciousness, nuances as water turn,

streamlet as novella lost in our undercurrent.  I’m lost in a story now

or a story’s lost in me. Perhaps we should hang on words so that

we do not drown. Remembering makes living its anchor. So I asked

if it’s us you wanted to save insisting everything  is placed this way

and that way of our anniversaries, each moment  achieved  as light

buried in water—so it’s here or there, past or present, our chairs and tables,

dresser and records becoming the dykes. The mirror’s at an angle

to the world so it does not yield all its light at once. Everything’s our

subject before we become their subject, relying on memories to endure.

The #Babishai2015 Festival runs from 26t to 28 August at The Uganda Museum.           

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