REVIEW OF Yusuf Adamu’s Landscapes of Reality.

By
Alkasim Abdulkadir



Only few people posses the kind rich of vistas like the picturesque thoughts inherent in the mind of geographer, this is made more poignant when the said explorer of landscapes is a poet.
To share in the wealth, anguish, hopelessness, beauty, heroism and sometimes the commonness of this land, one needs to transverse the pages of his new oeuvre, Landscapes of Reality published by Adamu Joji Publishers to measure the temperament and pulse of the poet in relation to his immediate environment.

He is a scenic writer, but one couldn’t have expected less from one who is a scholar of the rather unusual sector of Medical Geography, and at the same time a creative writer and columnist of varying experiences. Aside being a part of the new fad of tribesmen called bloggers who maintain a diary on internet blog sites, he is also a children’s writer, an editor and publisher. Most importantly his capacities to write in his indigenous Hausa language, has marked him out as contemporary bilingual writer of reckon.

The book Landscape of Realities opens with the section titled Innocence; the poet takes us on a reflective trip back to what sages call the age of Innocence. The section contains poems like The Child, Truth, Childhood dreams, Almajiri and Happiness. In the latter on page 12, he compares the joys extracted from the mundane aspects of life to the worldliness we attach too much significance toD. He begs us to reflect and engage him on which of the comparisons can give one more fulfilment. In Almajiri on page 11, he takes a swipe at the migrant Almajiri scholar who ekes out a living far from his abode through begging for morsels of leftovers, the poet describes him as young and frail, in another line he writes that he must hunt for himself. The poet ends the poem by posing a question at the Ulama by the rhetoric how could he learn with a empty stomach?

In the section titled places the Poet pays a tribute to his love for explorations, first he pays obeisance to his profession as the seeker of mountains, plains, deserts, and winds, cities, and villages and he ends by the declaration Where shall we be if there is no geography? The poem ‘Kano’ continues the tradition by poets to pay tributes to the spaces they inhabit; he singles out Kano and its centennial old histories of commerce, he proclaims its renowned religiosity and share of decadence -when he says it’s a place for saints and sinners. He denies its exclusivity to any shade of paradigm, when he writes finally -it’s a place for everyone. Other Poems in this section are The Jos Plateau, Kurra Falls dedicated to Geography students, Wembley Stadium, Seven Sisters dedicated to a certain Cherith. This section goes to prove the point, that writers can not be separated from the spaces they live in for the places provide the breeding ground for their ideas and the stimulation of their minds. Someone once said that each poet must adopt a City to love, and truthfully don’t all of us have places we are married to in our hearts?

The must poignant section of the book is the one where the writer goes on a reality check. The section is aptly named Realities. Yusuf Adamu takes us on a trip through our collective failures as a nation, he reminds us of our deep sea of inadequacies. The poems provide a vista of how we failed yesterday, and are failing today, and alas not ready to remedy the situation tomorrow. From Page 22, where he writes about the needless death of women through maternal mortality in the poem Child Birth, he proceeds by reminding us that even when the child is born his suffering begins for he lives a life exemplified by being Poverty-Stricken to being Malnourished with feeble bones in the poem Malnourished Child on Page 23. Other poems are Fuel Scarcity, Motor Cyclist, Career Beggars, Professional Beggars, Government Hospital, Government School, Poetry, The Poet Died dedicated to Mamman J. Vatsa, where he remembers the late Soldier-Poet –The power of the Gun/He knew quite well, yet it is the power of the written word/he believed in. He also confirms the immortality of every writer when he says nourishment of memory never ceases/as the living drink from his lines.

Poets have often be referred to renegades, rebels with a cause, most at times a cause for the common good of all, the following can be glimpsed from Driver’s View, Strike, Kayan Sarki, Rebellion, Smash Them, Military Chemistry, Military Coups, Power and Speak Out.
Yusuf Adamu’s like other poets of his generation is a social crusader, at odds with the limitation of the potentialities of his vast country riddled by several years of systemic malaise. He has done his bit; the lessons are left for us to take away.

alKasim Abdulkadir is the Head of Programs Zuma 88.5 FM Radio Abuja.
+234-805-2858345 +234-703-6684411 alkasim.abdulkadir@yahoo.com