Title: Dead Manners: An Anthology of New Age Poetry
Author: Read About Us Africa Collection
Availability: FEMRITE Bookshop
The word “manner” is a curious one. It may be used as a noun in describing demeanor. In this sense, it may suggest that the person under consideration is of an unusual kind.
Then, there is how the word is used in the book Dead Manners. Manners, here, are a byword for values; their death was largely caused by imported norms and customs reflecting a colonial hangover that drinks deep from the dry well of what it currently means to be African.
To drive the message home, with hammering instance, as it were, are 50 poems from 10 Africans. They break bread with the reader regarding love, morality, gender equality, identity, poverty, exploitation, justice, religion, education and climate.
Dear Ex, written by Niyorurema Happy Herman from Rwanda, falls under the theme of love. No way, you say? Well, okay. Let us see.
Yes, the gardener of lies;
I used to be, the orbit of thy moon
Colony of thy soul, Thy hope beyond heavens…”
This is the second stanza. The persona uses “thy”, the archaic form of “your”. Clearly, the persona is pinning for a love lost in dated language to demonstrate a dated romance.
The fanciness of this kind of diction in contrast to the rather lackadaisical use of the word “ex” is telling. Or, so I thought.
Is the persona trying to bring classical and modern, past and present together anew? Thus, in so doing, does he hope to renew his love? Well, after this starry-eyed poem, we descend somewhat into, wait for it, sin.
This poem, titled Sin, falls under the theme of morality. From Grace,” writes Pinkleen Oinokwesiga, a Ugandan poet. The flow of words, like sin, creates a hunger for more. So this might be a guilty pleasure to those who prefer restraint over unbridled passion.
And yet cannot get enough of this amorality unconfined. All told, there is a sort of agnosticism to this poem. That’s because the poet acknowledges the dire consequences that come with sin, according to scripture.
For the consequences of sin (according to scripture) lands us on the “other side”, as in Hell or the Styx.
Still, “the guide” in the poem must be God. However, the poet’s use of a lower case ‘G’ to connote God reveals a skepticism, in the poet’s telling, regarding His ascendancy over us all.
Later, under the theme of exploitation, we read about what every workday “stiff” may experience in the poem, Hating On My Job.
The poet bemoans the impersonal grind of everyday employment in ways that many of us can relate to.
It is a mouse wheel. The more we run on it, the more we seem to stay in one place. How’s that for progress? At any rate, this collection of poems is restorative of spirit and renovative of values in a manner that resurrects longed-for dead manners from a fitful repose.
