The overall tone of the contents in this volume still speaks to the realities on the ground. There is that unwritten yet established tradition of literature mediating in the national space especially in trying times after all the core role of literature is to unsettle the space, unravel the truth and build the blocks for the emergence of a free society. Therefore, in this edition of ANA Review, literature and creative writing has taken the stage once again to attack the profanity and vitiating of our commonwealth by those Maria Ajima in 'By the Rivers' categorises as “Our wicked rulers” who “came in stealth” and “Claiming to be the anointed ones.” The ornate voice of the poets crystallised in unanimity of opinion about the pervading “darkness” over the land. Su'eddie Vershima Agema uses 'This Heart Holds Hurt' to throw hard knuckles on the mood of a society taken to task by a looming splash of percolate bees disturbing the peace and denting the horizon. The brutal epigrammatic conclusion, “Night is the colour of pain/a beast that must be tackled,” throws light on the morbidity of a monster that needs more than physical strength to pull off the tender lopes of our national stage. What needs to be done is to tackle “night” and relieve this land of the blast of misfortune pandered by venal gods from within and without. From poem to poem, darkness loomed afloat like lost bangles on the crevices of the sand. Abdulaziz Abdulaziz draws attention to more darkness in his poem, 'On the Helix of my Ear.' He surmises the reality when he notes that, “Dead in the night/It perched on my helix/Like the previous night/It came with its soothing songs…” His earshot nightmare at the moment of thought gets a full blare in the short fiction of Hajaarh Muhammad Bashar whose story, 'Three Shades of Darkness,' a pneumatic segmentation of “darkness” into hues and a rather subtle expose on the new normal of urbanity and the errant characters finding meaning in strange places. 

ANA Review 2019

From poems that raptly attack the shenanigans of the moments to short fiction that leaves us with bare-faced faction of imminent reality of a society lost on many ethical fronts. So we came face to face with the raw edges of "vampire herdsmen" in Benue, Plateau, Taraba and much of the North Central through the lines of Igba Ogbole, Richard Inya, Egbonwachi Oluchukwu Jacobs, and many others. Inya's 'In the Kernel of Service,' where "Giant hawks prey on pension funds" is a biting analytics of lost terms of existence and a rather morbid unmaking of national ethos that leaves us with a blast on our emotions as he yet bellows that, 'This path is not far from mass murder.' Amaka Blossom Chime added a more direct echo of the situation, in some sort of situation report, 'The Land Writhes in Agony.' We are soon to be confronted by starkly naked lines capturing the angst and fears of the moment: "My land weeps and trembles/for the blood soaking/for violence and oppression." From this epitaph to the miasma of undoing strewn on the psyche of a people, the bloody unfolding and continuing bloodiness of our national space recasts all the prospects of decent development and becoming into doldrums of hopelessness. Therefore, from poem to poem, the story of change losing track and traction pasted itself on the voices and punches of our emergent literary talents. Muhammad Kaigama Alwali Kazir's 'Chibok 269' unsettles the space more with the currency of the nuisance a country makes of her maidens in a most reckless rubbishing of the substance of female education in Chibok and Dapchi. It is through this poem that we have the opportunity to retune our sensibilities to the long nights of darkness left over an innocent Dapchi school girl Leah Sharibu, still locked in the cocoons of Boko Haram. Kazir's lines sends torrents of goose bumps down our spines: You left your beds untouched/ the taps running/Your dinner uneaten, your exams unfinished. What more ways can we be reminded that this country is yet to be serious about the welfare of the girl child. When will these girls come back to have proper dinners and write their unfinished examinations?

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ANA Review 2018

2020

2020

Synopsis

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ANA Review 2019

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ANA Review 2018

2020

2020

Synopsis

Read on the Bambooks mobile app

Books by Association of Nigerian AUTHORS

ANA Review 2019

Related titles

Where?

I Laugh at These Skinny Girls

21 My Predicaments

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First Fruits

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Emotions and Belief 4th Edition

For Broken Men Who Cross Often

Awaken

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0 Rating(s) / 0 review(s)

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