In this second chance of reflection, I wonder if my country really care about her image, or rather if the appointed image launderers and official cultural officers of this country understand the politics of presence in the context of the league of nation within and outside Africa. I recall now that Poetry Africa 2001 was sponsored by a welter of local, national and international organizations including embassies. Its principal sponsors are National Arts Council of South Africa and the City of Rotterdam with support from First National Bank, the nation's prime financial institution, and the French Institute of South Africa. I wonder if ever a local government or a Department of Culture or a banking corporation in any state of the Nigerian federation would give the slightest sympathetic audience to any team interested in organising an austere 2-day poetry gathering under any name, however beautifully authentic, inventive or articulated. Ah, poetry is not a jamboree of contractors and concubines wishing the great performer another tenure even before another bout of campaign is announced. I remember that the embassies of Israel, Canada, Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand and the United States had special interests in the poets attending from these countries; I know that the Alliance Francaise in Durban organized a special reading for Amina Said, the Tunisian poet born of a French mother; I know that the British Council had work for Dorothea Smartt to do in Cape Town; and I know too that Tracie Morris was chauffeur-driven from Johannesburg to Pretoria to be received by some official of the United States embassy. But my memory fails me now; I cannot recall if any of my own country's agency or commission imagined the need to show even a token pretence of support for such cultural event. Oh, what has poetry got to do with the High Commission's beat? Aren't there more urgent assignments like whirlwind state visits and official wedding rituals? Is poetry not the bad ritual of jobless rebels? Is poetry not the prattle of the childish who claims to be a patriot?

And Czeslaw Milosz would ask "What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people? /A connivance with official lies, /A song of drunkards whose throats w

I came away from Poetry Africa 2001 with greater conviction than before in the persuasive power of poetry, in the myriad aesthetic possibilities of the art, and in the significance of the strategic science of the word. As a writer with a sense of place and time, I am personally committed to the force of a poetic vision which recommends both playfulness and intense commitment as the binary necessity of writing; a playful transaction with images to imbue the word with a fresh, sometimes shocking, meaning; and a serious, but sometimes detached engagement with the idea of being human in a world gradually becoming too anti-human for comfort. I want to knead words into stones, into flowers, into fire-bombs, I want to play with words for effect and get engaged with the fate of my life, my society, and perhaps the world of my generation.

A true eruption of verse, a release of intense energies, a colourful display of voices and visions, and above all, the result of a painstaking ordering of time and schedule, Poetry Africa lived up to its hype and purpose. This is one rare opportunity for the poet to confront his shortcomings and discover himself anew. In the course of the festival, Amina Said wrote a brief poem in French and wished it could be translated into other languages. About eight of us took up the challenge to produce what turned out to be a lengthy, interesting babel of words as the special offering, after the Parade of Poets, on the last night of performance in Durban: Arabic, "Canadian English," Creole, Dutch and ancient Greek, Maori, Tshona, Zulu, and Yoruba. And to think that Kofi Anyidoho of Ghana had earlier encouraged me to begin to do research and experiment more with traditional verbal art believing that the kind of poetry that comes from traditional African societies like mine is stupendously rich for inventive reproduction. Momentarily, I triumphed over my fears of a subsistent dependence on the colonial tongue. I discovered more...and wished that the festival would beckon onto others from Nigeria in the years ahead. Yet I stopped to ask, whence the wake-up call from this national lethargy towards the practical promotion of the arts? Who hides the axe away from the fig tree of cultural complacency? Who loves the wasting of talent in this land? Who is afraid of Poetry?

To every departure an arrival
To all beginnings, a new beginning.