Thought is a mental process on ideas, themes, etc that usually precedes actions such as communication, problem-solving, decision-making, and conceptualisation.
There is hardly any action that a person wants to take without thinking about it first.
There is hardly any action that a person wants to take without thinking about it first.
Communication as an action has four major forms – verbal, non-verbal, written, and visual. Thus, ‘Thoughts in Verses’ is a series of mental processes on different themes that are being communicated by the author through poetry.
This collection features 50 inspirational poems by Ololade Ejemdibia and published in 2022 by OAK Initiative, a publishing arm of OAK Foundation, which is a charity organisation established with the aim of supporting indigent students, widows and the orphans in Africa.
The set of 50 poems has the drive that will enable the reader to immerse in it for a long time and see a clearer view of all the themes explored by the poet.
The poems can be grouped under 14 different themes – change, love, knowledge, feeling, period, hatred, hope, light, environment, life and death, corruption, power, virtue and evil.
Change, it is said, is the only constant thing in life. Nine poems, ‘Boy and Man’, ‘Different’, ‘The Cracked Egg’, ‘Growing older’, ‘Change’, ‘Shifting World’, ‘Dynamic’, ‘What is Change’, and ‘Dying World’ fit into this theme and depict not only different forms of change but also how difficult it is to notice some forms of change.
In ‘Different’ for example, ‘In the morning you will wake/And everything will be just the same’. This line is ironical and shows how difficult to notice any change between the time when one sleeps and wakes.
‘But something will be different today. Something will have changed’, the poet is still not sure that something has changed, but really something has changed and what has changed could be you.
One of the best poems in this theme is ‘The Cracked Egg’ which is a metaphor for a life of struggle. The struggle may crack us facially, but the poet admonishes that we should keep our hearts as they were, ‘Now I have been cracked/And my insides are on display … But I am no less worthy than before/For my insides are just as they were’.
In this collection, four poems fit into the theme of love. They are, ‘Love Proposal’, ‘Happiness By Your Side’, ‘Each Other’ and ‘Aloneness’. The language of love is universal. Once it is expressed in any form, it is usually understood.
In ‘Each Other’, the poet uses love as a panacea to pain and anguish. Once two people are in love, they have nothing but each other for comfort in any chaotic situation. ‘Happiness By Your Side’ is like ‘Each Other’ in context. In that poem, the two characters go further and dream of overcoming their fear and finding happiness by staying side by side with each other.
Four poems, ‘Flaming Hatred’, ‘Dark Cloud’, ‘What Love Is’ and ‘Hatred Is A Cancer’ fit into the theme of hatred.
‘Knowledge’ is another theme of importance. Five poems, ‘Looking For Knowledge’, ‘The Price of Knowledge’, ‘The Path’, ‘That Desire’, and ‘Self Doubt’ are suitable for this theme.
In ‘The Price of Knowledge’, every price paid in seeking and acquiring knowledge is worth it at the end. It buttresses the famous saying, ‘If acquiring knowledge is expensive, try ignorance’.
