Chidi,
I'm trying to imitate your episodic poetic style:
The Kol Nidre, the 5785 / 2024 Yom Kippur is over.
The miscreants now feel that they have all been cleansed
Cleansed of sin, and are now all like new-born babies.
Meanwhile in Bethlehem, the mayhem continues.
If we didn't have the time to browse through Free Speech by Timothy Garton Ash - we could go straight to the section on Religion where he discusses the theme, "respect my religion…"
Modesty, humility etc are wonderful character traits, although in this forum I think that you are being unnecessarily self-deprecating - just as Bilal, the first muezzin in Islam who even after Abu-Bakr al-Siddiq had purchased his freedom kept on referring to himself as a former slave ( he does so repeatedly in his autobiography) in contrast to what the Torah emphasises : "You must not go back that way again" - and by extension - not that anyone should forget or discountenance history, personal history, ancestry etc and this ought to apply to that Creole ethos, Haitians, Jamaicans etc , although without some of that self-consciousness we would not have had a Frederick Douglass, an Edward Wilmot Blyden , a Marcus Garvey, a Malcolm X , a James Baldwin, a Martin Luther King Jr., an Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan, a Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I suppose Chidi would like me to add " a Barack Obama " and for good measure "a Kamala Harris " ?
In my view this is more like the real Chidi :
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=122147630222256975&set=a.122102977088256975
As a pounce-r, a fearless tiger who is prepared to speak truth to power as represented by e.g. Iran's Supreme Leader - unlike the many others that only now are brave enough to condemn the Fuhrer, now that, thank God, he is gone and the evil terminated, whilst unfortunately right now too, and not without reason, we observe fascism, neo-Nazism and antisemitism erupting everywhere including in the United States and in Europe its original birthplace and battleground and in the Arab and the rest of the Muslim World in particular, currently being stoked by what's happening in Gaza, in Lebanon and the West Bank, these forces of fascism, neo-Nazism and antisemitism are now ferociously gestating....
In my view, this speaking truth to power ought to be viewed as consistent with Alfred Nobel's " in an ideal direction" , the main guideline as to who should be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as stipulated in his last will and testament.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is an open road is open to all and unlike the Owerri Motor Park, there are no road signs saying " No Entry"
As my dear mother used to say, " despise not the day of little things" -so in my view, what you have done so far is not little, it's considerable and part of the magic of changing from nothing to one.
In my view you have all the prerequisites to compete - although it's not really a competition - - as per my own broader definition by which speaking truth to power is " an ideal direction" and that's why there are some Nobel Prizes in Literature that are said to have been politically motivated - maybe , hence we got Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - some say his award was politically motivated - but to the disappointment of many of the post- revolution Iranian dissidents - and mind you when it comes to poetry, Iran is a great country ,and just as there are Great French Writers, so too there are Great Persian / Iranian Poets and Writers ( who sadly are not studied at any of the post-independence missionary school in Nigeria). About thirty something years ago there was some excitement over here - at least among some of the Iranian dissidents who were hoping that Ahmad Shamlou would awarded the prize and that was also a possibility - even if politically motivated -i.e. - part conspiracy theory that Uncle Sam would put pressure on The Swedish Academy and that at their behest Shamlou would be awarded the Prize because of his criticism of the Iranian regime….
Now smell this : Surrender or starve': Attack on Jabalia hints at controversial Israeli plan for northern Gaza
Given your Biafra War background, there's this one thing about you that I can't quite figure out : Your ambivalence about the suffering of the Palestinian People, something that you could please clarify , not necessarily in poetry.
Mazi Cornelius,Chidi? Chidi Anthony Opara? Do they award Nobel Prize in Literature to Motor Park Poets (MPPs)? If yes, Would they agree to do the presentation at Arugo Motor Park Owerri?-CAO.Hefty Congratulations to Han Kang & family, the world, the word made flesh, and the world of Korean Literature !
Han Kang !
It's inevitably an inspiration that unlike Man Friday, she writes in her mother-tongue Korean without having to justify such a natural choice of words like a literary anti-colonial ideologue, armed with a / the "colonial language" and at war with a polemic fever forever complaining about the dominance of English as a world Language - pardonnez-moi - English as the dominant world language, causing the laissez-passer French - the perfumed garden, the champagne, wine glasses & roses, the language descendants of the Great French Writers and among the living, the greatest language chauvinists to sigh under their breaths about the snail-like rate of expansion of the French Language Empire compared to that of the English Language Empire. And when we look at world languages by population, hopefully, not to be unmindful of the other Language Empires, some of them also rapidly expanding.
Pretty much an annual event, the announcement of the Prize was preceded by a ten-minute discussion on Swedish TV with some of the Swedish literary pundits hoping to be right, making their forecasts and sometimes prophecies about who they thought or prayed - deserved the prize this year.
"You should never count your chickens
Before you eggs get hatched...
Who will wear the crown?
Who will it be?
A slip of the lip
Has been known to sink a ship"
As always, the most dramatic moment ( like the US Supreme Court about to deliver a final verdict on if Trump was going to be on the ballot in Pennsylvania) at1300 hrs GMT the doors of the Swedish Academy were flung open - who will it be ? Ngugi? Chidi? - the hushed audience of expectant journalists from all corners of the world waiting with bated breath as the man of the moment Mats Malm the Permanent Secretary of Swedish Academy, brown suit, white shirt, throat strangled with a red tie, looking unctuous, the seriousness of the occasion, sounding a little sanctimonious ( like Nathan Söderblom) and with a voice dripping with honey, announced, first in Swedish, and then in Almighty English to the hushed silence: "The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to the South Korean author Han Kang, "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life".
My first reaction, slightly reinforced by awareness about Censorship in South Korea was I wonder how the Brethren and Sistren in North Korea will be feeling about this? Will they be reading Han Kang ?
Second reaction : Han Kang being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature will inevitably promote more curiosity about Korea , the Korean Woman, and of course apart from the literary tourism that returns books back to bookshelves, she has made and is making history, also making Korea more of an attraction, a tourist destination
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, Institute Of Information Management Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates(https://updatesonnews.substack.com)He is a recipient of International Award/Recognition For Excellence In Data And Information Management, with 253 mentions on Academia(academia.edu)as at July 22nd, 2024.
More about him here: https://independent.academia.edu/ChidiAnthonyOpara
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
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