K'cracy, Trees in the Storm and other Poems

Foreword

ix Foreword his collection would better be rearranged into themes or streams of poetic inspiration! A reflection that has stalled the publication of this anthology. However, I contend that poetic creativity and its inspiration are a drift from the hard and fast rules of algebra, geometry, the laws of physics or arithmetic and trigonometry. The present arrangement has so been done not without the consciousness of the import and need for the lofty idea of structural and thematic unity; but upholding the idea highlighted by scholars of Diasporic Consciousness. On Arguing along similar lines, I would cite a fellow poet and academic, Dr. Mishra who says, “What is peculiar about Diasporic Consciousness is its ability to make connections based on an underground logic of colours, tropes, sounds, texture, moods and secrets. Such association may generate subtle links between seemingly disparate strands and forms.” It is in this light that the present arrangement in this volume was made and rightfully picked up by one of the reviewers of this collection who has seen in it “a platter of maze”. I consciously refrained from splitting the poems into any sub-categories because the poems themselves like their creator, who through his wondering around the world has keenly observed and followed the paths of political despair, guide the reader through those paths to a Humanist Hope. The individual poems in themselves celebrate, at the same time, a number of human concerns from love, death, birth, innocence, experience, childhood, adulthood, nature and Man to society and politics. How could anyone categorize a poem celebrating love, death, birth and politics? Would it be a political poem, a love poem, an elegy or a nativity poem? I enjoin you, readers to embrace the poems in this volume not with the idea of finding convenience and contentment but frustration and dissatisfaction engendered by human, social, cultural, economic and linguistic displacements, at home and abroad, which are the driving force behind my message of hope. Being a home and away son, child and poet has provided me the ability to swing to and from and tap from both home and away consciousness leaving my reader with the inner map of this Diasporic Consciousness based on a multiple route logic. Were I to restructure this volume, it would be doing my readers and the volume a disservice. In guise of a conclusion, I would like to seize this opportunity to thank most especially, those classmates of mine who, in the early days of my writing, spurred me on almost a daily basis to give them something to read and reflect on. I would also like to thank fellow poets like Dr Mishra, Mr Peter Vakunta, Mr Beorn McCarthy, and the novelist, Pr Michael Meehan, scholars who made many useful criticisms of the poems in their manuscript form. T ...