Philip O.C. Umeh studied English at the University of Lagos; taught
English at the Government College, Umuahia where he was senior English
Master until 1978, and where he himself had been a student, from 1955 to
1961, one year below the writer and political martyr, Ken Saro-Wiwa in
the famous school, to whom he addresses a eulogy, “To Ken Saro Wiwa” in
his poems:
Victor Ludorum –
For the Spartan rigours of Umuahia
All for Ken
Olives for laurels
From the city scattered over seven hills
All for Ken… .
From 1978 he was Editorial Director at the Publishing House, Nelsons,
and from Publishing, he went to government, and retired from public
service as the Federal Director of National Productivity.
Umeh’s experience as public school master and civil servant seems to
ramify in the tense, dissatisfied moodiness of his collected poems
Rhythm of Conscience & Ambassadors of Co
rruption (Author’s House, 2014)
.
The poems are gathered in a self-published collection, and in many
ways could have gained from a far more disinterested process, even if
only to lend it a little more polish and selective care.
But it speaks in part to the condition of contemporary publishing,
which today is more democratic, far less guarded, and untroubled by
regulation and its sometimes paralyzing gatekeeping.
It is certainly, of course, open to debate, what readers of subtler
forms of poetry would make of Philip Umeh’s work, poetry being such a
profoundly subjective genre. But it is important here to note that there
are two categories, in my view, of poetry and of poets writing
currently in Nigeria.
There are those who view poetry as a functional and eclectic mode
shorn of all alluring and pretentious accoutrement, but which speak
directly to the condition of the world and its experience.
There are those who think of poetry as a more aesthetically
conscious, and rhetorically complex system of thought whose many layers
carry the force of poetic truth and which convey that force through the
ordered pattern of deliberately layered language.
Philip Umeh’s poetry belongs with the former; he privileges utility
and accessibility over acrobatics and complexity. The danger of course
being that the poems might come off as rant.
But if it is rant, it is a sustained rant that speaks equally to the
poet’s willingness to get to the meat of things, and rouse, without
equivocation, the sedated numbness of his audience, and apply neither
balm nor iodine to the cutting edge or effect of his words.
Take the example of the title poem, “Ambassadors of Corruption” –
there is nothing subtle or circuitous about its purpose. It is, as the
Igbo saying goes, a way for the poet to eat the proverbial roasted
breadfruit nuts and thereafter bare his teeth to his audience. The
effect is singular; piquant:
Ambassadors of poverty are
The corrupt masters of the economy
With their head abroad
And anus at home
Patriots in reverse order
Determined merchants of loot
Who boost the economy of the colonial order
To impoverish brothers and sisters at home.
Ambassadors of corruption and poverty are
The “saviors” of the people
Office loafers in the guise of leaders
Barons of incompetence
With kleptomaniac fingers
And suckling filaments
Position occupants but enemies of service
Locked in corrosive war of corruption
With their peoples treasury
And killing their future. …
It is a long poem with ten irregular stanzas.
Each stanza plays up on the mood of the preceding stanza, by working a
variation of the theme as a repeating cycle of values. There is irony
here, but it is not the irony of warm and inverted feelings; it does not
take us gently by hand, to reveal itself, it takes us by the scruff of
the collar; it is a direct kind of irony; the sort of brash truth that
draws attention to itself by its implications.
It is dark-eyed and shorn of humor, and skeptical. Yet memorable is
its amusing caricature of elite doubleness and inversion – the
self-regarding “patriot” whose double consciousness, the result of the
neocolonial condition that keeps the contemporary African “elite” at the
slippery and interstitial space of the crossroads, with his head
abroad, while he defecates at home. Philip Umeh is pitiless with these
catchphrases.
Rhythm of Conscience is ordered into twenty sections that
give significant heft to the book. The stanzaic order of the poems
however, is in fact, not ambitious, and feels in part ambivalent and not
too well-thought.
These poems would have gained more from an investment in more formal
authority; a sense of innovation, and a little less emphasis on what is
communicated but rather on how it is communicated. The general frame of
this collection is fairly predictable.
It is this lack of surprising truth or language that might grate the
jaded reader seeking new stirrings from poetry, and a new visionary
power.
Philip Umeh’s poetry offers none of this, but a sensible, heartfelt, and brutal truth about our contemporary condition.
In general, of course, the critic will quibble about the technical l
details; but these poems are to be read – and read purely for their
ordinary truth, and their ordinary power to reaffirm for us, and remind
us all once again of what Achebe made famous as, where the rain began to
beat us.
Aaron
and Maanan are two of the children of James and Hannah Ofosu. There is tension
in the Ofosu household because James Ofosu wants Aaron and Maanan to pursue
engineering and law respectively. He is especially sure of his selected career
choices for them as he chose business and medicine for his other two sons and
they are thriving in their fields. His career choices for Maanan and Aaron are
not going as smoothly and they want to take up dancing and painting instead.
Maanan is especially unhappy about being pressured into doing law because she
works in the same office as her father’s friend Lawyer Bonu who has been making
advances at her and also polluting her father’s mind against her selected
career choice of dancing, and planting ideas in James’ head suggesting that
something might be going on with her and Aaron’s friend Awere. Maanan explains
the situation to her mother Hannah, who sympathises, and when they try to
explain the situation to James, he blows up and sees it as a conspiracy to get
him to give in to Maanan’s wishes to become a dancer. Later during the day, Lawyer
Bonu comes to visit Maanan, professes his love for her and subsequently makes a
move on her. a struggle ensues in which Maanan bites lawyer Bonu’s hand,
causing him to shout in pain. The commotion downstairs attracts James to the
scene. He is shocked to see with his own eyes cold hard evidence of the serious
allegations that have been made against his dear friend. James sacks Lawyer
Bonu from his house. George, one of their older sons, now a successful doctor,
walks in as James and Hannah are discussing the events of the day. George
serves as a voice of reason and helps to soften James’ mind towards Aaron and
Maanan’s selected career choices, pointing out that he happened to like the
career James chose for him. George also informs James that Awere has started to
make money from his paintings and has sold one for two hundred and twenty
pounds. Feeling defeated, James gives in
and decides to let Maaanan and Awere pursue their selected career choices. 
Victor Ludorum –
