Poets Dami Ajayi and Umar Sidi go head-to-head at Konya Shamsrumi’s #MeetingOfBards on June, 2018.
#MeetingOfBards is a discussion between two talented poets on their craft, exploring the landscape of ideas and inspiration in Africa Lit, as well as laying emphasis on the tricky issue of the future of poetry. It is an initiative of Konya Shamsrumi a poetry-publishing house built around the KSR Collective which comprises Richard Ali, Umar Sidi, Kechi Nomu, Funmi Gaji and Rasaq Malik Gbolahan. In the last year, the series has hosted Unoma Azuah, Leila Chatti, Chika Jones, Lydia Kasese and many others.
The first edition of #MeetingOfBards for 2018 will be between poet and Naval officer Umar Abubakar Sidi (Striking the Strings, The Poet of Dust) and Saraba Magazine co-founder, the poet and medico Dami Ajayi (Clinical Blues, A Woman’s Body is a Country). The conversation will be divided into five segments—Disenfranchising the Poet; Poetry and the Question of Utility; The Aesthetics of Listening; Women as the Cornerstone of the Material World and The Mechanics of Craft.
On a poem about women, Umar Sidi says, “While the erotic imaginary may be misleading, the poem is essentially a meditation on Ibn Arabi’s idea of the Unity and Oneness of Being (Wahdatul Wujud) and the idea of the Sacred Feminine. The poem is about fusion and union. It is about attraction and permeation. It is about the wedlock of the ‘sacred feminine’ (Surrealist) represented by a goddess and ‘unity of being’ (Sufi) represented by the poet.”
Dami Ajayi responds, on the same thread, with “I am not certain there is anything more deserving of praise than the female form and I say this for obvious reasons.”
The first #MeetingOfBards will be published on Monday June 11, 2018.
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