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<\/a><\/p>\nThese poems consider many themes, some light and tongue in cheek, others dark and grim. Underlying them, sometimes even the most hard hitting, is a sense of optimism and an on-going joy and delight in life and love and all the nuances and richness of language. \u2018Amaryllis\u2019 is a fine example of this with the opening line \u2018I celebrate you, precious gift\u2019 and the whole poem is scattered with words like blissful, joyful<\/em> and miracle<\/em>.<\/p>\n There is humour too, especially in the love poems, a lightness of touch and pleasure in the quirkiness of things. In \u2018No Love Song For My Loveress\u2019 (a twist of language even in a title) the poet says \u2018Memories! They will make a songwriter of me.\u2019 He depicts his muse and the gods as demanding \u2018perfect brew sonnets\u2019 and declares he hates Shakespeare for being a better writer of love poems. He then introduces his own perfect comparison \u2018Shall I compare you then to fresh pumpkin leaves\/dancing to the song of a rainy season breeze?\u2019 There is much laughter in these poems and a limitless energy. \u2018The Gift\u2019 concludes with these lines: \u2018Now you are all mine to keep, elegant gazelle\/eyes glint by the night fire at our picnic. We cut\/a hole in the world, step out into ours\/the air stretched taut with desire\/we roll in the sand like joyful canines\/ … Then laughter.\/So much laughter that our sides hurt.\/What are we high on?\u2019<\/p>\n As I read these poems I am increasingly aware of a sense of honouring, of giving homage and benediction. Many of them are praise poems. \u2018Amaryllis\u2019 ends with these words \u2018You have healed me, and covered me\/in your costliest marabou. I will honour you\/with my faith through seasons green or grey.\u2019 \u2018Isuikwuato II\u2019\u00a0 is like a litany with the anaphora \u2018This Village\/My Village\u2019 and the lines \u2018This is where I wish to be when I grow old.\/Shed no more tears O land of my fathers\/For even now I am getting ready to dance\/On the hot sands of Nkwonta\/Prepare the drums.\u2019 Even in \u2018Wake\u2019 where there is \u2018no sunshine\u2019 and the devil is astonished \u2018that I raise my hands to God in praise\/at a time like this\u2019, the poet says \u2018Yet I must praise Him; He shielded you, though you fell by the roadside\/from talons, and beaks, from bald birds of the wild.\u2019<\/p>\n The poems in The Bridge Selection are lyrical, written on the \u2018wings of songs\u2019 and abound in a wealth of images. Some of my own favourites are \u2018a voice like silk rubbing against a black man\u2019s hair\u2019(If I Don\u2019t Write A Great Poem Before I Die),\u00a0 \u2018I wake and rock like a zombie tree in a roaring storm\u2019(Strings of Wilderness) and \u2018O blessed memory live; night fire and roasting yams\/moonlighting and moonlight tales\/beast songs and hunting games.\u2019 (Isuikwuato).\u00a0 A richness of tone as well: there are hints of fables, proverbs, sayings, prayers and a world with overtones of myth and literature but one that is powerfully\u00a0 everyday, urban and rural, British and African.<\/p>\n All this and more \u2013 the more being a world of violence, hunger and exile, where singing has stopped and given place to \u2018a legacy of terror\u2019, where people are \u2018brainwashed\u2019, \u2018living by the gun\u2019 and where both hoe and machete are the norm. Powerful poems these: \u2018Dead Sun\u2019,\u00a0 \u2018Red Pastures\u2019, \u2018A Conversation with Sorrow\u2019, \u2018Mad Songs, \u2018An African Tale\u2019 are among the poems of anger, bitterness, regret and sorrow that tell the story of a people \u2018now naked\/in front of dusty mirrors\u2019 who are living in a land that is not their homeland, wearing political and social suits made \u2018by alien tailors\u2019, where their dancing was described as \u2018Jungle\u2019 and \u2018their names deemed unpronounceable.\u2019 There is much yearning in these poems for the village \u2018where in the thick earth\/the trailing cord\/from my navel was interred.\u2019<\/p>\n Nnorom Azuonye has chosen to preface his collection with one called \u2018If I Don\u2019t Write a Great Poem Before I Die\u2019. This, I think, sums up the spirit of the collection \u2013 to show the world \u2018darkness cannot be the fruit of light\u2019. \u2018When it mattered,\u2019 he says, \u2018jaws unlocked, I spoke out loud\u2019. He speaks out loud in every poem and this \u2018dreampot\u2019 matters in every one. In the penultimate poem in this fine collection, \u2018A Poem About Flowers\u2019, the poet is strong in his manifesto: he will not be regressed \u2018to the age of darkness\u2019; will not \u2018be walked backward.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n