Miasma

By Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Miasma is a collection of 60 odd poems spanning eight chapters, amassed across forty years while trying to understand and organise life and its contrasting realities, frustrations and tragedies. From 'Of Pains & Plains' with focus on personal pains, disappointments, anxieties and anger, to 'Pubescent Agitations' - the oldest poems with its attendant blunt self-assuredness and the adorable naivety of a young African adult in a tumultuous developing nation.
Other chapters include 'Thoughts On Melancholy' and its dark contemplations of death and losses; 'Libations' with its racy adulation of a few of Africa's icons; the themes of anguish and sorrows in 'Elegies & Eulogies'; the raking matter of generational failings in 'Cudgels on Stony Moulds'; to 'Habitués' with its window open towards the highlights of four famous Nigerian cities; and finally, the poet's enduring love notes to his 'Person of Interest'.
Surely, Miasma is a collection primed to connect with readers who are interested in understanding the nuances, impulses, happenstances and sentiments of the Nigerian society in the past forty years...through the binoculars of an effusive and deliberate participant who lived actively in those climes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Femi Akintunde-Johnson
• Release date: Nov 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005313678

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Virtually everybody calls him FAJ... he's been a writer and avid reader since age 11...with a number of journalism, entertainment and other awards confirming he is in the right place. So much to share and engage after 35 years of intense dalliance in the creative industries...during which he founded and published a number of magazines with national spread, and two books, narrating slices of a peculiar life.As he grows older, the itch to write and share more suggests we will be seeing more of his books, God willing. By the way, he is a football addict, crazy about his wife and three children, and lives happily in Lagos, Nigeria. You can reach him on @TheRealFAJ or [e-mail].

Book preview

Miasma

(Undulating Poetry of

Identity & Turmoil)

Miasma

(Undulating Poetry of Identity & Turmoil)

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Miasma

(Undulating Poetry of Identity & Turmoil)

Copyright © 2021  Femi Akintunde-Johnson

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes without written permission of the publisher; except for brief quotations in printed reviews, for education and enlightenment.

Published by Basic Skills Academy 

([e-mail])

Lagos, Nigeria

Cover image: From Canva - Designed By FAJ

This collection of poems is dedicated to all who played a fairly significant part in my growth - physiological, emotional, spiritual and otherwise: Racheal Ashiawu Akintunde, my mother; Elizabeth Funmilayo Kalaro (my sister whom I thought was mother); Olufemi Sikeade Willoughby (nee Obasa) who stood in fervently as my mother from 1991 until her demise in 2017; and last but certainly not the least, my wife and life partner whom I have shared 30 years of friendship and matrimony with as at August 8, 2021, IreOluwatunde Anne Akintunde-Johnson (nee Willoughby).

Thank you all for adding to the flow and ebb of my life…and because of your diverse impact in my experiences, I am able to pierce through the miasma of life; and wield cudgels on behalf of women, children and the disadvantaged…. hopefully, forever.

Contents

Introduction

Of Pains & Plains

Pubescent Agitations

Thoughts On Melancholy

Libations

Elegies &

Eulogies

Cudgels on

Stony Moulds

Habitués

On The Waves of January 24

Introduction

This collection of poems is a lifelong process which began somewhere between the lounging provocatively frustrating two years of leaving secondary school and awaiting results into a university (1982-1983); and January this year, 2021. A span of about forty years where, in actual reality, the most prodigious years were essentially between 1983 and 1988. More than 80% of the poems were birthed in that period.

  Those six years were pregnant with deep and severe emotional and psychological challenges for the poet whose intimations with sundry events and realities evoked all sorts of reactions and sentiments.

  'Of Pains & Plains' has 15 poems