A pun star cometh: A review of Sati Gomwalk’s ‘Garden of Thorns’

A new collection of poetry shows the many ways in which words can be used or ‘abused’, resulting sometimes in the most intricately-woven work.

Title: Garden of Thorns

Author: Lengshak Sati Gomwalk

Genre: Poetry

Publisher: Ya-Byangs Press

Pages: 78

Reviewer: Bizuum Yadok

In Chinua Achebe’s ‘Arrow of God’, a story was told of a land dispute that arose between Umuaro and Okperi villages. When the debate about the ownership of the land started in Umuaro, members of the community decided on two options: to have a civil negotiation or engage in a war, and these two options were symbolized by chalk (for peace) and palm fronds (for war). To that end, a three-man committee spear-headed by Akukalia, an ill-tempered person, was sent to present the two options before the people of Okperi. As you may guess, if you haven’t read the text, upon arriving Okperi, Akukalia’s tactlessness quickly paved a way for a physical fight with an elder in Okperi and before anyone could come in-between them, gunpowder was fired into Akukalia’s chest.

Neither the chalk nor the palm frond was presented. Consequently, Akukalia’s death would later usher in a wave of reprisal killings in both Umuaro and Okperi until the white man intervened. Now, I brought this anecdote to suggest that a message is as good as its medium or the messenger because if Akukalia had been diplomatic, a peaceful negotiation would have ensued. How, then, does this relate to poetry? One may ask.

Poetry is not just a philosophical message but it is also the grandeur of the language in which the message is encapsulated. The message and the language/style can be broadly termed as ‘form’ and ‘content’. As to which of them is superior, a number of poets and critics have taken either the Aristotelian position or the Platonic position but I am of the opinion that the 1^st Century Roman poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, otherwise known as Horace has since brought the argument to an end by suggesting that “poetry should delight and instruct” (dulce et utile).

Therefore, poetry doesn’t hold much water if it only instructs, or if it only delights, except if it does both. Think of it this way, would Fela Kuti’s afro-beat music stand the test of time if it was just the beats and nonsensical lyrics (message/theme)? What if the lyrics were not accompanied by the beats? Perhaps a more appropriate analogy lies in the plethora of poetry in the popular hymnal, Sacred Songs and Solos (SS & S). Pardon me because where you see hymns, I see poetry in both body and spirit; form and content. Do we still wonder why they have survived for hundreds of years and would likely outlive us?

Lengshak Sati Gomwalk’s poetry is not lacking in the use of the aforementioned ingredients of poetry. Not only that, he explores different forms of poetry from different generations and places of origin.

It is imperative to note that every poem has a form; the fact that it is composed in lines and stanzas already gives it a form. However, if all men are to wear black suits on white shirts and black ties, there will be little called style or even fashion. In this light, poetry expressed in different forms or modes doesn’t just add to its aesthetics but also its meaning, and ultimately, its value. At this point I should iterate that many Nigerian poets do not pay much attention to form in poetry; this phenomenon may be attributed to the immersion of the first generation of Nigerian poets into modernist poetry in the mould of Gerald Manley Hopkins, Ezra Pound, and T.S Eliot, just to name a few.

More often than not, African poets forget that a good form makes poetry more memorable. Why do people, for instance, easily recollect verses in rap than Soyinka’s poetry? No offense meant, but most times form is the driver of memory. What lends weight to the form are the rhyme, rhythm, metric pattern, syllabic pattern, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeic depictions, and pun. Thus, Lengshak Sati Gomwalk’s poetry is not lacking in the use of the aforementioned ingredients of poetry. Not only that, he explores different forms of poetry from different generations and places of origin; poems like the tanka, the haiku, the sonnet, the acrostic, and different other artistic forms. To buttress these points, we shall look at just three poems from Garden of Thorns: ‘Dark Light’, ‘Adviser-in-Chief’, and ‘Waste of Minds’.

Dark light is not just recognized for its brevity or thought-provoking theme. It is also a special kind of poem which has its root in Japan and was later popularized by Europeans yet the form is still known as the haiku. Essentially, the haiku is a 3-lined poem with a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. Thus, Gomwalk’s “Dark Light” reads:

TV, deceptive;

Gate to the free world of jail,

Light that veils the mind (P.2)

All that is needed in a haiku is found in the aforementioned poem. Not just that, the title is both oxymoronic and ironic at the same time. The TV here is used metonymically as a screen, which represents the television, computer screens, tablets, and phones. Take it or leave it, these screens now determine trends, culture, and mode of consumerism in our society today and since they are being controlled by capitalists, deception might just be a strategy of the so-called globalization.

Unconsciously, people surrender to the paradoxical “free world of jail”(Line 2). Resultantly, that knowledge or awareness that these screens claim to give somewhat blinds nations and that could be understood properly when we see how they are used as tools for dissemination of, especially Western, propaganda. The poet queries the light (knowledge, information, awareness) that the screen claims to supply and in a way, he cautions the hapless user to sift whatever information he stumbles upon in the media. Hardly does a brief poem gather weight this much.

From the same origin as the haiku is the tanka, although far less popular than the haiku. It is a poem of 5 lines and 31 syllables divided into a 5-7-5-7-7 syllabic pattern. A classic example of such a poem is found in Gomwalk’s “Adviser-in-Chief,” which reads:

Gyemat knew it all;

She was marriage counsellor.

Then she got married.

Truth took the throne; the cute cake

outlasted her own marriage! (P. 3)

The repetition of the word ‘marriage’ in this seemingly prosaic poem gives a hint that it is themed on marriage. However, every marriage is unique, just as every individual has his own fingerprint. Therefore, Gyemat, an Ngas word for an unmarried ‘lady’ – in this case a know-all (sabi-sabi) type – falls into the trap laid by her omniscience. While some lines in the poem are short, others are a bit longer, and while some are hastily terminated with a full stop, others have run-on lines (enjambment) and this testifies to the uniqueness of every marriage. Indeed, regardless of the formulas doled out by motivational speakers and, with all due respect, religious clerics, marriages that are fated to last will last anyway. The ones that will crash will still crash although a lot of hard work and patience is required to keep them intact. 

As a creative with a third eye, Gomwalk investigates the rot in that part of Jos through the long poem with three cantos

‘Waste of Minds’ is a pun, a play on words. Anybody who is familiar with the city of Jos would be familiar with its red-light district, ‘West of Mines’, originally known as Rotnorong.  That is one part of Jos that sleeps in the daytime but comes to life at night. It was more of a market designed by colonial lords, in the heydays of tin mining, for locals to spend their money on imported whiskeys, tobacco, and women.

The goal was to make whoever makes money in the mines to part with the money they make in the city thereby further impoverishing the people. As a creative with a third eye, Gomwalk investigates the rot in that part of Jos through the long poem with three cantos, which he titles, ‘Waste of Minds’. The poem has three different personas in the cantos: A villager cum drug dealer, an innocent girl turned into a prostitute and a crook who poses as a law enforcement officer. Each of the cantos has a rhyming pattern of abab, cdcd, efef, ghgh, ijij, which makes them delightful to the auditory system.  Stanza five of the first canto reads:

Brilliant minds gone gaga, waste of minds

He can’t whisper ‘be still, this waist of mine’

For there is sorrow in this wine, so he winds

Call it the Lost Man’s Paradise, this is West of Minds (P.27)

Take a look at his play on the phrase, ‘West of Mines’ without actually saying it. In line 20, he makes a perfectly fitting allusion to John Milton’s Paradise Lost and perhaps the wild wild West, or the occidental West, “Call it the Lost Man’s Paradise, this is West of Minds.”

The second canto has six stanzas and it somewhat runs in parallel with the fifth stanza of the first canto. Here, the author takes his reader to a harlot’s room in a brothel and the reader gets to hear as she takes pride in her portion of West of Mines.

This is her palace, the drunkard’s den: Waste of Minds

‘there is nothing wrong with this ways of mine’

‘I can do as I please, I can trade this waist of mine’

Christ is the answer in this harlot’s hades: West of Mines (P.28)

In the last line of the stanza, line 44, the poet exploits his poetic license to unabashedly inject his spiritual inclination to his poetry. But, hey, if taboo words are permissible why not the gospel? In any case, the poet doesn’t even judge the persona, instead, he sees a potential that is being wasted by objectifying herself as a commodity. Similarly, the eighth stanza of the third canto quite resembles the one discussed above.

She declares, ‘I can do as I please with this waist of mine’

He says, ‘do as I say, don’t copy these ways of mine’

This is the dungeon of filthy decay . . .waste of minds

Used to be the haven of miners . . . West of Mines

The way and manner Lengshak Gomalk seamlessly plays with words and de-familiarises them is what makes me christen him a ‘pun star’. He appears dexterous in his use of rhyme, rhythm, pun, and even alliteration. Consider the opening stanza of one of his highly alliterative poems, ‘Casting the Casket’:

Grating the grains, grating them gradually

Chopping, chirping, chomping, chewing . . .

Cutting the cute cedars, carving them into elegant cadavers

It always starts with a harmless harmonica, humming

The jackals howling . . .owl’s hooting  . . .

The shovels undress the subsoil to dress the comely casket

And now the post-mortem; a sojourn in futility

Pathetically, the rigor mortis is the start of life’s journey

Hypothetically, the requiem mass signals the gift of souls (P. 21)

Old English and medieval English poetry are typically characterised by a surplus of alliteration; an excerpt from the aforementioned poem gives us a glimpse of how deep the poet went to drink from the ‘Perian Spring’, a spring of knowledge. The entire collection of 66 poems is suffused with a variety of themes most of which were discussed in the preface to the text like drug abuse, prostitution, underage marriage, religious hypocrisy, war, love, optimism, and joy, among others.

The entire collection of 66 poems is suffused with a variety of themes most of which were discussed in the preface to the text like drug abuse, prostitution, underage marriage, religious hypocrisy, war, love, among others.

On a general note, the Gomwalk’s debut has something for everyone. The poems are rendered in concise language with a magnetic form. It is a work that will keep dragging the reader to itself even after the reader has finished reading it. A few typos could be picked but the combined effect of the beauty and the message blinds the casual reader to such inadequacies. With his collection, Lengshak Gomwalk has not just written his name in the register of poets, but also announced himself as a ‘pun star’.

Yadok is a teacher, poet, and novelist.