University of Ibadan visit and the gospel according to St. Mark Nwagwu…

* Poetry and the human condition

By Chiedu Ezeanah

WHEN a scientist, a professor of Molecular Biology, is also a passionate amatory poet and prolific novelist, as well as a social media celebrity, I can see clearly that we have a planetary consciousness that aligns and transforms all the fragmentary elements of existence, the matter and the man and the map, like an alchemist into a larger-than-life vision of a compulsive and obligatory human connection that is also ordinary because it is also true.

My 10-year sojourn in the newsroom as a career journalist which I left formally as a newspaper editor tended towards what we call news stories with ‘The Human Angle’ that focus more on the human experience rather than mere reportage of raw and hard facts. I have tried to translate this human angle into my practice as a poet. The human experience matters in reportage, so does empathy for the multiplying victims of history.

Nikki Giovanni, who lately joined the ancestors at 81, after a remarkable and triumphant life as a poet and a sturdy voice as a public intellectual and advocate for human causes says you don’t write poetry from experience but from empathy. I can understand her point: the world is in this sorry abyss, has been in the abyss, mainly for the absence of the latter. Filling the pages and the stage with words makes us all performative role players, but does it necessarily make us more human?

Professor Mark Nwagwu’s still evolving life and career at age 87, as a scholar, scientist, passionate poet and prolific novelist and social media celebrity tells us that everything matters, including experience and empathy, but the human connection matters most. It bears repeating that if you have ever encountered him in his multitudinous roles, as a patriarch of his immediate family and that of our literary generation, a professor of science, a guiding light as a poet and cultural icon, Nwagwu’s story tells us that empathy matters and experience also matters. His experiences of human interactions have shown him that empathy matters. He writes poetry of human connections at the most passionate, empathetic and compassionate levels: LOVE.

What makes Nwagwu an extraordinary person is that he does not only write empathy, he lives it every second, as ordinarily and unpretentiously as possible. He is a gift to my generation and he keeps giving, much more than enjoying sharing beers with his age mates and much younger friends and admirers, but he also checks all the time on his friends, old and young, male and female, within Nigeria, Africa and beyond. In this wise, he has lived several lifetimes and generations in one. Yes, it was a wonderful experience visiting Ibadan, my birthplace and the University of Ibadan, my Alma Mater, mostly because a Mark Nwagwu encounter would always make a difference and a lasting inspirational impression. I stayed for almost a week. And I could have stayed longer just for these reasons.

Mark my words: Mark Nwagwu is going to keep living so long as the world still exists. May his prophecy below, in his own words, be truth eternal for him and for all of us so long as we can borrow a cue or two from his expansive life blessed with healthy longevity, aged 87, about what makes him laugh like a child all the time:

Mark Nwagwu: I’m ever in the beginning that I may begin, disappear, and return to my beginning!

Chiedu Ezeanah (left); Prof. Mark Nwagwu and Dr. Oladoyin Odebowale

* Ezeanah, poet and publisher, lives in Abuja