MULTIPLE AWARD WINNER, AUTHOR,, CORPORATE MC, MENTOR, PROMOTER & AMBASSADOR FOR PEACE -UNIVERSAL PEACE FEDERATION. WE PROMOTE THE SUCCESS STORIES OF AFRICANS & CARIBBEANS AROUND THE WORLD. CONTACT US NOW ON +447882809005
Ayo is a London-based journalist who has worked as a magazine and newspaper editor for the last 31 years. He was the founding editor of Nigerian Watch, the UK-based paper for the Nigerian community in the UK. He is also the author of two books on Nigeria. Fuelling the Delta Fires is an expose which reveals the depth of the challenges in the Niger Delta, while Black Ladder is a narrative about the life of a Nigerian immigrant in the UK. In addition, Ayo is a columnist for several publishing houses in both Nigeria and the UK.
Ayo has a history degree from the University of Ibadan and I did my post-graduate studies in journalism at the University of Westminster. He is the current president of Ondo Union UK, the chair of Uncelebrated Nigerian Awards UK and was the chairman of the Nigerian Centenary Awards UK organising committee.
Expressing Life and Nature in Wild and Free A Review of Remilekun Jaiyeola’s Wild and Free By Folorunsho Moshood
After the melodious vamp, the opening lyrics of Black Men United’s 1994 single song entitled ‘You Will Know’ readily come to mind: When I was a young boy / I had visions of fame / They grew wild / They were free / They were blessed with my name. Black Men United was a collaboration of African-American R&B neo soul and soul music artists.
The song was written by a young D’Angelo along with his brother, Luther. Reading Remilekun Jaiyeola’s ‘Wild and Free’ reminds this reviewer of that opening lyrics of ‘You Will Know’. Introducing the book, the poet writes, ‘Wild and Free’ is a collection of poems about life and nature.
There are poems about the joys of being wild, and poems about the freedom of being free.
The book was inspired by the feeling that we all have deep within us—that there’s something wild and free in our hearts seeking expression’. In the case of Black Men United, what grew wild and free were the visions, and the artists expressed them through a single song, ‘You Will Know’.
This should provoke the reader to know what will grow wild and free in people’s hearts that the poet expresses through ‘Wild and Free’, a collection of forty-eight poems written by Remilekun Jaiyeola and published in 2022 by New Touch International Limited, 1A Pemberton Road, Bradford, United Kingdom.
From ‘Firework’ to ‘I Am Powerful’, the poet treats us to chewable bones of poetry about nature, life and how life should be lived. These ultimately revolved around the themes of confidence, struggle, pleasure, pain, beauty, peace, loneliness, freedom, bondage, love, care, hardship, friendship, Legacy, regret, resilience etc.
The forty-eight poems that will transport the reader to the poetry land where poems enliven the spirit are as follows; ‘Firework’, ‘Falling Apart’, ‘I Let Them Out’, ‘Ask Yourself’, ‘When I was Young’, ‘Nothing is Hers’, ‘I’ll Find My Way’, ‘Beauty’, ‘I Don’t Know’, ‘Walk in Nature’, ‘A New Way Home’, ‘If I could Fly’, ‘Worried’, ‘See the World’, ‘Possibilities’, ‘Golden Hour’, ‘Love and Hope’, ‘What Do You See?’, ‘Ask God’, ‘A Gift for God’, ‘Most Beautiful’, ‘Left Behind’, ‘It’s Everywhere’, ‘I Wish’, ‘To Be In Love’, ‘My Friend’, ‘Apart’, ‘Overcome’, ‘I Feel Like’, ‘Regret’, ‘Fear And The Dark’, ‘I Didn’t Know’, ‘Wild and Free’, ‘A Place of Wonder’, ‘The Goodness of Your Voice’,
‘Finding Joy’, ‘I Believe in Fate’, ‘One Thing’, ‘Where I Feel Safe’, ‘How to be Free’, ‘Stand Still’, ‘Looking Forward’, ‘She Did It All’, ‘I Am Myself’, ‘Lost In The Dark’, ‘I am not Free’, ‘What do you want?’ And ‘I am Powerful’.
It is worthy to know that some themes in this beautiful collection are used antithetically to bring out contradictory effects. Two poems are perfect examples, ‘Wild and Free’ and ‘I Am Not Free’: In ‘Wild and Free’, the poet expresses freedom. The poem goes thus: Outside, nature is wild and free / It’s the perfect place to be / The wind is blowing, / the trees are rustling / I can hear birds singing, / telling me something. / When I look at nature / it makes me feel / I’m a part of something / bigger than myself / for I am wild and free.
But in ‘I Am Not Free’, the poet expresses bondage, which is an antithesis of freedom. The poem goes thus: I am not free, / I am trapped in a cage. / The bars are made of fear, / And their shape is dread./ I wish I could run away, / But there is no way out. / I’ve been here for so long, / And I don’t know what to say. / I’ve been here for so long, / I’m just not sure how to stay. There are some poems that have similar themes in context. A careful analysis of these poems shows that they can easily flow into one another. Two poems are sacrosanct in this regard, ‘How To Be Free’ and ‘Looking Forward’. In ‘How To Be Free’, the poet shows his failure on how to be free.
The poem goes thus: I wish I knew how to be free. / I wish I knew how to let go / of the things that keep me stuck, / and make me feel like a failure, / I wish I knew how to / Worry less about other’s opinion / And seek how to be free / Living to free myself / From the dangers of human / Who also are in a quest / To get freedom at my expense.
But in ‘Looking Forward’, the fear of failure that the poet expresses in ‘How To Be Free’ becomes a beacon of hope. It goes thus: I’m looking forward to the day / When my heart is finally free— / When I can walk out the door, / And never look back. / I’m looking forward to the day / When I can finally say goodbye— / To all the things that have held me back, / And keep me locked inside. / Today I break free / From shackles / that won’t let me be. The poet in this collection features some poems that pose rhetorical questions to the reader. Two of such poems, ‘What Do You See?’ and ‘What Do You Want?’ are hereby examined: In ‘What Do You See?’, the poet brings out another form of contradictory themes using rhetorical questions: What do you see / when you close your eyes? / Is it a daydream, / or a nightmare? Do you see the past, / or the future? / Do you see your heart beating, / or your blood flowing? / Do you see peace and quiet, / or chaos and strife? / Do you see yourself in love, / or alone and afraid? It is all about choice-making. The antithetical pairs are Daydream and Nightmare; Past and Future; Peace and Chaos; Love and Alone.
In ‘What Do You Want?’, the poet is so direct in asking the reader to make his or her choice using the same style in ‘What Do You See?’. The poem goes thus: What are you going to do with your life? / Are you going to make art? / Or are you going to make money? / Are you going to take risks? / or play it safe? / Do you want to travel the world? / or stay close to home? / Do you want to make something beautiful? / or just make a buck? /The choice is yours / What do you want? The pairs of antithetical words in What Do You Want are Art (Fame) and Money (Fortune); Risk (Danger) and Safe; Travel and Stay at home. Other poems of rhetorical questions are Worried, A New Way Home, Beauty and Ask Yourself.
A literary device that is very common in this collection is enjambment. The reader will see a sentence continues into two or more lines in more than two-third of the poems. Examples of some of the poems and their enjambments are ‘Firework’ (A flash of colour in an otherwise dull night), ‘Falling Apart’ (The world is falling apart, and I don’t know what to do; I feel like my heart is aching, and I can’t bear it another moment; The darkness has come for me, and I don’t know how to fight it; It seems like the only thing is to give in to the pain) and ‘I Let Them Out’ (There is an ocean in the center of me; But I know it’s there. It’s filled with all my dreams and wishes and hopes; I let them out, they’re reflected at me).
Other literary devices that the poet employs to make emphasis or create sensory effects are hyperbole, imagery and metaphors as well as oxymoron. These literary devices are more pronounced in poems that showcase the beauty of nature such as ‘Walk In Nature’ and ‘Beauty’.
In all, the language is lucid and the style is free verse with two or three poems featuring rhyming schemes. There are some spelling errors such as ‘Shackels’ instead of ‘Shackles’ in ‘Looking Forward’ and ‘Center’ (American) instead of ‘Centre’ (British). In ‘What Do You See?’, the word ‘Quiet’ should have been ‘Quietness’ in the context it is used. The poem, ‘I Wish’, shows lack of consistency in the use of tenses: The poem goes thus: I wish there was a land / Where the sun always shone, / And the flowers always grew. / Where the air was warm and sweet, / And the people were kind. / Where the sky is a rainbow / And the grass glows in the moonlight / Where all fantasies come true, / And hearts are full of love and light. The poem can be better written in a single tense.
In Remilekun Jaiyeola’s Wild and Free, the reader will know that life and nature grow wild and free in people’s hearts – they inspire them to make life-long choices. The people include the poet and his audience. Most poems in this collection are lyrical and easy to commit to memory.
Above all, some of the poems answer the questions of life, struggle and death and point to the way life should be lived. I recommend this beautiful collection to all and sundry especially poetry lovers.
Life Lessons in Remilekun Jaiyeola’ ‘The Silver Lining In The Dark Cloud’A review by Folorunsho Moshood
It is known that the phrase, the silver lining in the dark cloud, is a metaphor of hope in a seemingly bad situation. It could also be something positive coming out of a difficult or unpleasant situation. A difficult situation can be man-made or natural. If a difficult situation is man-made, it could be easily and quickly addressed by identifying its source or cause. However, if a difficult situation is as a result of a natural force, it might take a miracle to address it. Without any doubt, life is full of ups and downs, pains and pleasures, gladness and sadness, rises and falls, light and darkness, night and day etc. Whether it is man-made or natural, the wise thing for human beings to do is to always get prepared for battles of life.
Th e book, ‘The Silver LiningIn The Dark Cloud, is a collection of three short stories w ritten by Remilekun Jaiyeola and published by New Touch Int. Ltd 1Pemberton Road, Bradford, the United Kingdom.
It explores both man-made and natural challenges of life and possible ways people can address them and even rise above them.
The book, creatively written, is made up of 61 pages, which branched into 3 good stories – ‘A Blessing In Disguise’, ‘Mixed Blessing’ and ‘Grace’.
Coincidentally, the three stories have a common denominator – the birth of a child.
They address the issues of bad governance, sickle cell anaemia, bareness, genotype, resilience in the face of hardship, miscarriage in marriage, student leadership, love, hatred, broken relationship etc. Just like the birth of new babies in the three stories, every hardship in the book also births at least an opportunity.
The first story, ‘A Blessing In Disguise’ is divided into three chapters, ‘Hardship On The Spot’, ‘Responsibility of A Leader’, and ‘The Timely Preparation’. The story, which is written in third person narrative, is set in a village called Atiba that has only one school, Best Legacy Government School.
The village has been neglected for long by the government. It has no good road, no g ood health facility and no electricity supply. Even the teachers in Best Legacy Secondary School have not been remunerated for three months. The story, which also has a sub-plot, revolved around the principal of the school and some students who have just been selected to be school prefects. The story has Mr. Obi as the main character.
At home, Mr. Obi and his wife, Sandra are praying for the seeds of the womb after years of marriage. God finally answers their prayers, Sandra conceives but later has a miscarriage.
In school, the newly selected prefects decide to change the bad narrative of their village.
Th head boy, Ezekiel, prepares a road map towards achieving that. When the roadmap is presented to the village chief, a silver lining comes out the dark cloud.
The chief informs the students about the spelling competition that is scheduled to take place in the city. The winner of the competition will act as the governor of the state for a day. Mrs. Chike, a teacher in the school prepares the students for the competition that is eventually won by the school.
This achievement gives Ezekiel, the winning student, who acts as a one-day governor of the state, the opportunity to bring development to Atiba village.
Two months after, Sandra, the wife of Mr. Obi, conceives again and subsequently gives birth to a set of triplets. The second story, ‘Mixed Blessing’, is also written in third person narrative and divided into three chapters – ‘The Dashing Hope’, ‘The Long Waiting’ and ‘Glory Dawn’.
This story is set in Mr. Dotun’s home, and it opens with the protagonist, Mr. Dotun playing romantically with his pregnant wife, Funmi. They have been married for two years without a child in the family.
When the family eventually loses the pregnancy, Dotun’s mother becomes angry with Funmi and vents her spleen on the innocent wife. Three years later, Funmi’s mother-in-law vows to get Dotun another wife if Funmi does not conceive in the next three months and give her a grand-child. Expectedly, Funmi’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Adebire and Funmi’s husband, Dotun are spiritually and morally behind her – they provide the needed succour for her.
One day, Funmi’s parents visit their daughter and offer some spiritual tips which later work out perfectly well. Six months after following the tips, Funmi conceives again and later gives birth to a baby boy.
Just like the two previous stories, the third story, ‘Grace’, is also written in third person narrative and also divided into three chapters – ‘The Crisis’, ‘The Break Up’ and ‘The Sickle Cell Initiative’. The protagonist, Dorcas, is a stickler who is often attacked by the disease called ‘Sickle Cell Anaemia’. Due to these frequent attacks by the disease, she has her job terminated by her employer. Her relationship with Solomon, her fiancé, also turns sour due to the same reason. These two misfortunes do not distract Dorcas from achieving her goal in life. She stays focused! She prepares herself for a conference on sickle cell anaemia.
At the conference, she presents a paper that stands her out among the participants. This achievement comes with an employment – she secures a job with Mega Growth Investment Limited.
Mr. Godspower, her boss at the company, later develops an amorous relationship with her. They finally settle down as husband and wife. Fortunately, Mr. Godspower has AA genotype with Dorcas’ SS, they can only get a child who has AS genotype.
That is exactly what happens to the baby girl their union eventually brings forth to the world. She is AS! But Dorcas later succumbs to the sickle cell anaemia – she shuffles off the mortal coil at the age of forty-two. She leaves behind an enduring legacy for the world. Her husband, Godspower is very proud of her even in death.
Through the stories by Remilekun Jaiyeola, the reader will see clearly the silver lining in the dark cloud. The language is simple and easy to understand. The three stories follow the same pattern and style. The dialogues are so rich and can be easily adapted into three plays. However, there are some few errors in the three stories.
For example, in the first story, the author presents Best Legacy Government School as a School, but instead of using ‘Headmaster’ for the head of the school, he uses ‘Principal’. In the first paragraph of the same first story, the author writes, ‘…the only school in that village is Best Legacy Government School’, but in the third paragraph, he erroneously writes, ‘…with just a primary school and secondary school, the village is what we can call an undeveloped area.
There is also few typos. The errors do not in any way diminishes the real value of this book – it is a work of art that can be improved upon.
There are many lessons to be learnt from the book. The lessons in the last story is for all young lovers who are planning to get married to one another.
Remilekun Jaiyeola is telling the reader that even before you fall in love know your genotype and that of your partner.
Jaiyeola has raised his voice as a writer against losing hope in the face of any battle of life. There is usually a silver lining in the dark cloud for everyone. This book is a must read for all and sundry, especially young lovers.
TONY TOKUNBO ETEKA FERNANDEZ 