Sola Osofisan
07-29-2009, 03:20 PM
By Akintayo Abodunrin
Aderemi Raji Oyelade, known in literary circles as Remi Raji, is an award winning poet and teacher at the Department of English, University of Ibadan. NEXT talks to him about his fifth collection of poems ‘Gather My Blood Rivers of Song', and on his writing in general.
Gather My Blood Rivers of Song, isn't that a mouthful title for a collection of poems?
Unfazed, Raji responds: "It may be a mouthful but it has a meaning all of its own. It's probably more like a sentence and that is the beauty of imagining a title, any title at all, for a poetry collection. I was also being inventive about it.
The original title was Gather My Blood and then one poem responds to the other and I came up with more, like a response to the material statement ‘Gather My Blood'. Then I asked: what is that, that should gather my blood, what is that would raise up my soul and that would bring about an eruption of verses, an eruption of emotion?
"I responded with Rivers of Song because I find some metaphors recurring in a number of those poems; these are water images, and then I arrive at that response: Rivers of Song. What I then did was to have a series of poems that are of almost the same thematic focus and I grouped them into two parts so that toward the end of the collection, you find a number of poems, I think 15 of them, under the sub-title ‘Gather My Blood' and then you have 15 others under ‘Rivers of Song'."
Interspersed in the collection are poems from the poet's earlier volumes, ‘A Harvest of Laughter' and ‘Webs of Remebrance'.
More on NEXT (http://www.234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/5438130-147/story.csp)
Aderemi Raji Oyelade, known in literary circles as Remi Raji, is an award winning poet and teacher at the Department of English, University of Ibadan. NEXT talks to him about his fifth collection of poems ‘Gather My Blood Rivers of Song', and on his writing in general.
Gather My Blood Rivers of Song, isn't that a mouthful title for a collection of poems?
Unfazed, Raji responds: "It may be a mouthful but it has a meaning all of its own. It's probably more like a sentence and that is the beauty of imagining a title, any title at all, for a poetry collection. I was also being inventive about it.
The original title was Gather My Blood and then one poem responds to the other and I came up with more, like a response to the material statement ‘Gather My Blood'. Then I asked: what is that, that should gather my blood, what is that would raise up my soul and that would bring about an eruption of verses, an eruption of emotion?
"I responded with Rivers of Song because I find some metaphors recurring in a number of those poems; these are water images, and then I arrive at that response: Rivers of Song. What I then did was to have a series of poems that are of almost the same thematic focus and I grouped them into two parts so that toward the end of the collection, you find a number of poems, I think 15 of them, under the sub-title ‘Gather My Blood' and then you have 15 others under ‘Rivers of Song'."
Interspersed in the collection are poems from the poet's earlier volumes, ‘A Harvest of Laughter' and ‘Webs of Remebrance'.
More on NEXT (http://www.234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/5438130-147/story.csp)