In the classification of Nigerian poetry, the writers from the early 2000s began the journey of the fourth generation. Their idea of poetry comes mainly from their own experience—they were the last breed that was connected to the cultural environment where their parents came from, and they were also the class that fully embraced the postmodern nuances that were spreading across the world through the digital age. For, as Bryan S. Turner notes, there is the problem as to “whether one can embrace Western technology without [embracing] Western values.” The Nigerian poet, Dami Ajayi, interestingly stated in his first chapbook, Daydreams and Other Poems, that “life is the American Movie/to which we all aspire.” This announcement is a proclamation of the incursion of the postmodernist life of simulacrum. However, one thing stands out in the writings of Nigerian—nay, African—poetry: it is the insistence on a grand narrative which postmodernism is incapable of erasing from here.

This background of the subject of grand narrative is central to understanding the poems by Yushau Olatinwo. His poems mirror the struggle of one’s life in a capitalist world. His voice follows the critical realist tradition of the second generation of Nigerian poets, such as Niyi Osundare and Odia Ofeimun, although not in style but in the subject of life in a capitalist world. Of course, he also diverges from them in the sense that those generations were armed with revolutionary aesthetics; however, for our generation, it is a bit different. We are more etched in resilience and hope, and the will that we will ultimately survive despite the harshness of the world. It is this theme of resilience and hope that Broken Roads Still Leads Forward is committed to.

The collection of twenty poems follows the trajectory of the poet-persona, whose narration reveals the burden of being and survival. From the first poem, “Cold Hands, Burning Hope,” we are met with labour and the will to succeed: “The morning wore a coat of ice/and I stood beneath its cruel breath/washing stranger’s cars while my fingers forgot/what warmth felt like…” (8). He narrates how he felt “uncomfortable,” “numb,” and “ache,” but he knows better than to quit or take a break because “but the rent did not care about the cold,/ and hunger has never understood/ the language of excuses” (8), so he has to continue. For someone who understands the “…the stubborn mathematics of survival” (8), he had to endure:

…the silence after the work,

the terrible quiet where my wages should have been.

I had given my strength to the day,

yet the day gave nothing back,

only another reason to keep fighting (8)

What is more worrisome with this sort of life of survival is not in the labour itself. It is the event that the stanza above mentions. After all the day’s labour, there is terrible quiet where the resources from the effort should have been. For, as the narrator informs us, he gives everything to the day and seems to have nothing in return. However, the narrator wouldn’t fold because he promised himself he “would find steadier ground,/ a proper door, a better future,/ and hands that would no longer tremble for survival” (9).

This theme of survival—the reflection of our contemporary existence in a world where bills are piling up—is also present in the second poem, “Twelve Hours of Tomorrow.” Here, the theme of survival is more brutal because we see the persona using more than half of his day to struggle. He states that “Twelve hours became a road I had to walk,/ even when my body begged for somewhere/ to sit down and breathe” (10). He couldn’t because he had to walk on the road of survival. In this state, Olatinwo brings everything to life—the warehouse, machines, clock, and even the ache. He writes:

There were hours when time seemed cruel,

the clock moving like it had forgotten mercy.

I stood where I had to stand,

worked where I had to work,

because education was waiting on the other side.

The interesting thing about the subject of survival here reflects something deeper than a mere surface glance. While it is not directly mentioned in the poem, we would then begin to ask: what is the price of education for the African? Coming from a country where skills as basic as education are not even subsidised, one sees that the burden the persona bears is an unending resilience to attain that which the state cannot offer.

Then, as we read further, we understand that what Olatinwo mirrors is not just a reflection of an individual’s life—it is the unending generational zeal for survival which we find in most low-income-earning families in Nigeria. In “The Hand that Raised Me,” the poet-persona takes us through the struggle of his mother—as evident in the lives of most women in African homes—and I find it interesting that male poetry is also exonerating the efforts of mothers, so that the world can see that African women are not “down on one knee,” as Florence Stratton observes in her Contemporary Literature and the Politics of Gender.

“The Hand that Raised Me” is a testament to the resilience of mothers, how they count money “as though every note had a heartbeat” (12), yet “she kept dividing what little she had/ into pieces large enough for all of us” (12). What stands out here, for me, is that even if money has a heartbeat, to mothers, it does not matter. They would still ensure they give it out to their children. The poet goes further to state the sacrifices that mothers are committed to making on behalf of their children. And, in turn, every dream the children “carry remembers her name.” Hence, the poet’s ambition is to build a life where people he loves “do not have to choose between survival and peace.”

One other central theme in the book is the subject of migration—the feeling of happiness that comes with walking another road and exploring new horizons, and the loneliness that comes with it. From “The Road that Changed Direction,” we follow the trajectory of the poet, from the period of NYSC, the search for jobs, and everything that defines the life of a Nigerian student post-school life. He notes that “I had imagined a straight road,/ degree to job, job to stability,/ but life rarely respects our diagrams” (26). It is this life of instability in Nigeria that creates the need for a greener pasture elsewhere:

So I chose another horizon.                                 

The UK became more than a destination,

it became a gamble against uncertainty,

a Master’s degree became the bridge

between where I was and where I hoped to be.

But this move is not a straight and simple one. Because leaving meant saying goodbye to people and places he had been accustomed to. Also, it takes courage to move, knowing that uncertainty waits at the other end. But to have lived the life of the poet demands a kind of audacity which is birthed by resilience and hope.

Broken Roads Still Leads Forward is a collection that defines a period; it defines the era of cross-border Nigerians with their dreams, resilience, and hope. The language is simple—after all, the language of struggle may be complex, but it is simple on the surface. It is this simplicity that drives Olatinwo’s work. The other poems in the collection follow the stark language of survival, but also bear the rhythm of hope.

About the writer:

Oko Owi Ocho is an award winning poet and performer. He writes from Abuja, Nigeria.