By Muhammed Sidibeh
“Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.’ These are not my words but the engrossing lines of Carl August Sandburg, American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor writing in The Atlantic, March 1923.
Poetry can be a powerful teaching tool, helping students improve their literacy. It can also allow writers to express their emotions and allow readers to connect to those emotions. Poetry is also connected to aesthetics, or the exploration of what is beautiful in the world.
What is the value of poetry? Poetry gives pleasure first, then truth, hidden in complex imagery and philosophy. Its language is charged, intensified and sophisticated. The imagery in poetic writing is what every poet should strive for to achieve in his literary craft.
What is poetry and its purpose? Poetry is literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Thus, allow me to take a bend from the forest of poetry to the spell of my maiden book to be published titled: Dandruff. If you want to see and feel a classical villanelle, Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet, the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, free verse, limerick, elegy, dirge, ode, acrostic, x-lined stanza, octave, septet, sestet, cinquain, tercet, couplet and even monostich as well as others – all compiled in one book with intellectual blessing, then endeavour to read this literary masterpiece that is being cooked as soon as the book is published.
Equally, after meticulously reading this book, you would be able to surely feel the presence as well as the shadows of the technical poetic lines of Lenrie Peters of The Gambia, the rich imageries of Niyi Osundari of Nigeria, the Richard Ntiru of Uganda, the allusions of John Milton of England and the doyen of modern English Liiterature alias The English Bard – William Shakespeare of England.
In fact, to have The Gambia in your hand, the Africa within your phalanges and the world under your tarsal, Dandruff has it for you in glory detail.
Dandruf is an anthology of poems with critical analyses authored by myself, a young Gambian poet, debater, writer and above all, a teacher. My name is Muhammed Sidibeh alias The Magnetic Poet. In this crafted book, I graphically explore national, regional and international issues as I prick and massage the old and the fresh wounds of these burdens and boundaries. The book is couched in rich imageries and other fundamental poetic elements that will definitely get you thinking. It is also a suitable book for those who want to live by poetry or take it for leisure.
As you look forward to immersing in this beautiful anthology of poems with critical analyses, you can now start pre-ordering the book by contacting myself, the author on 2694165, or email [email protected]. The hard copy of the book will be available in July 2023.
