At the launch of the collection of poems by Adesina Adetola titled Midnight Whispers on May 31, there was a clarion call for the return to traditional African ways.
During his speech at the event, the writer said it was one of the reasons he did the book in the first place.
Former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Dele Alake, who wrote the second foreword for the collection and has been the author’s mentor, said Adetola is a true pan-Africanist and a master wordsmith.
While giving kudos to the author for such a seminal work of poetry, he said the poems cast him in the mould of Niyi Osundare and many other great literary icons.
The collection, which is in five parts, Renaissance Messages, Black’s Beautiful Heritage, Memos to Friends, Current Heresies and others contains poems like the title poem, ‘Midnight Whispers’, ‘Arise Africa’ and ‘A Clarion Call’ as well as ‘My Golden Pen’, ‘In my Mother Tongue’, and ‘Black is Beautiful’, among others.
The collection of contemporary poems on Africa is truly African in scope, as the poems wander far across the continent and make a call for the return to all things African.
The reviewer for the day, Art Editor for The Nation newspaper, Ozolua Uhakheme, agrees, as do the many other eminent reviewers who have written about the collection. One other thing they agree on is that the poems are an excellent contribution to literature from one who is writing for the first time.
Among those at the gathering were: the Onipora of Iropora-Ekiti, Oba John Ajayi; the author’s mother, Mrs. Florence Adetola; veteran actors, Fred Amata and Keppy Ekpeyong, and a host of others.