​​​​​Grief Is the Hiding Place of Love

the ministry of arts / books dept.

A major characteristic of contemporary Nigerian authors is their tendency to write about what is most immediately important to them. The subject of loss has become a major primer for creating art, as seen in Chimamanda Adichie’s Notes on Grief, Saddiq Dzukogi’s Your Crib, My Qibla and Gboyega Odubanjo’s Adam—because the way we experience and express grief is, in itself, a form of art. For author and poet, Wendy Okeke, grief is alive and breathing, often taking the place of what is lost or absent.

Okeke’s Grief’s First Kiss is an Avalanche is not just another collection on grief; this debut demonstrates the affinities between love and loss without putting one above the other. As readers engage with the book, they are prompted to confront the reality that love and loss often exist on the same emotional plane. This collection of sixteen brilliant poems fuses rich language with figurative elements to amplify the layered feelings of heaviness, yearning and love. With her first chapbook, Okeke endeavours to present the diverse ways she grappled with the loss of her loved ones—her father, her friend and her lover.

FAMILIAL LOSS AND LOVE

Like the flood, it comes—
nameless and silent, surging into spaces it doesn’t belong.
It doesn’t announce itself;
a quiet erosion
swallowing whole our father’s old Mercedes,
his laugh, his books with spines soft from turning