Review: ‘The River Never Returns’ By Emman Usman Shehu

The River Never Returns by Emman Usman Shehu is a collection of 75 poems published in 2022 by Topaz Books, an Abuja-based publishing outfit. It has a universal underpinning exploring Nigeria, Africa and the diaspora through various issues from politics to banditry to gender to migration and to racism. So on one-hand it could be likened to a mapping of emotions and interestingly the concluding poem in the collection is titled “Map”.

But the collection begins by laying the mapping essentials, a tour of the mechanics of poetry in the first two poems giving our imagination full rein in the first two poems – “Rising” and “Slice”. The former echoes a beginning like a taking off into the realms of the imagination and includes these lines : “ a poem takes us/without a ticket/without a visa/without a passport/ without biometrics…”. And “Slice” prepares us for the encounter.

Several things “ bring tears to the eyes” in this collection which initially seems not to be arranged in any particular order. However a closer scrutiny shows there is some sort of cyclical movement from within the poet’s country and continent and then across the oceans (“Migrations) and then a return to base, so to say. This is a strategy Shehu has frequently deployed in his previous collection –Questions For Big Brother, Open Sesame and Icarus Rising. So on the surface there appears to be no linearity and therefore irregular and  without pattern. But there is a method to this formlessness, a circularity. Hence  the reader feels he is in a whirlpool  within which the sorrow and tears and grief bounce back and forth.

“Cityscapes”, appears to be a playful take of the naming of Nigeria’s state capitals which primary schoolchildren undertake during morning assembly. But that playfulness transits into something more serious as it is presented like a mobile construct in no particular order, but each city is associated with some significant element. This is the longest in the collection and comprises 36 stanzas, each extolling a unique feature or characteristic of each of Nigeria’s state capitals. In one poem therefore, he takes the reader on a nationwide safari making short stops at 36 bus stops. 

One of the standout poems about the diaspora and possibly in the collection because of the depth of anger it evokes is the poem about Sarah Baartman (“Sarah”p63). Born in 1789 in what is today known as Eastern Cape in South Africa, she was enslaved and taken to Europe at sixteen where she became an object of sensational international objectification, displayed in the nude for her buxom physique before paying audiences and was derisively referred to as the “Hottentot Venus”. The power of this poem is that it is told from her perspective; the reader hears her in her own voice narrating her ordeals “as one of the first black women known to be subjugated to human sexual trafficking…whose) experience reinforced the already existing and extremely negative sexual fascination with African women bodies by the people of Europe,” as stated by Mikelle Howard in biographical article, “(Sara) Saartjie Baartman (1789-1815)”.

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Another captivating sequence is the set of poems that takes on the days of the week from Monday to Sunday and the teasing playful side of the poet cannot be missed. Sensitive readers might find themselves aligning with the unique mental and biological rhythms of each day of the week. Aptly this sequence starts with “Headlong” (Monday) and ends with “Finale” (Sunday).

Some of the poems in The River Never Returns are abstract. The poet uses a combination of sounds (words) and their meanings to conjure images for the reader. In such instances, it takes a reflective or literary-minded reader to draw sparkling water from the metaphoric river.

Generally, however, the lines come through as simple and deliberate in many instances like the draft of a song waiting to be reinforced and expanded to accommodate the chorus, beats and melodies into a harmonious composition.

The subject poem which provides the title for the book, is a metaphor for the creative process. When a poem spurts like a fountain from the pen of the poet and is anchored in letters and words, it assumes the character of a river and courses through all manner of terrains growing in size and strength until it empties into the sea.

Indeed, every river is on a constant one-way trip, forever beneficent with the elixir of life all the way to its estuary. Emman Usman Shehu sets us on the course of a literary river, and the ride downstream is enjoyable with this creative mapping of a variety of emotions appropriately linked to several national and international contexts.