Pius Adesanmi: A Service and an Honor
Toyin Falola
Pius Adesanmi: A Service and an Honor
A Roundtable on Pius Adesanmi at the Annual Africa Conference, Austin, April 3-5
The editors of the recently published 328-page international poetry anthology, Wreaths for a Wayfarer, are collaborating with the convener of the Annual Africa Conference University of Texas at Austin, Toyin Falola, to host a special roundtable called “Pius Adesanmi: In Memoriam.”
Scheduled for the 20th annual conference taking place from April 3-5, 2020, the session is conceived as a first-year anniversary academic celebration of the late Nigerian-Canadian writer, public intellectual, and professor at Carleton University, Canada. Adesanmi, it would be recalled, was one of the victims of the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight 302 of March 10, 2019.
According to Nduka Otiono of Carleton University and Uchechukwu Umezurike of University of Alberta, co-editors of the wave-making anthology, participants in the roundtable will include Toyin Falola, Abimbola Adelakun, Neville Hoad, and Uchechukwu Umezurike. The session will explore questions about history, literature and memory; pubic intellection, social activism and postcolonial development, etc.
The session will also feature a public presentation of Wreaths for a Wayfarer. The anthology honours the memory of Adesanmi and features 127 poets from Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia. It also features a selection from Pius Adesanmi’s sole collection of poems, The Wayfarer and Other Poems. The anthology is jointly published by Daraja Press, Canada, and Narrative Landscape, Nigeria.
His last book, Who Owns the Problem: Africa and the Struggle for Agency, published by Michigan State University Press will be introduced by Toyin Falola to all the conference participants.
At the conference banquet, he will receive a citation and one of the major awards by the University.
As I chant a poem from his only poetry collection, The Wayfarer and Other Poems, his voice continues to be ever present:
The Wayfarer
(for Colby and Camille Nicholson)
What tales shall the wayfarer tell
When time and tide
And the pull of ancestral blood
Return him to his native land?
Shall he tell tales of igloos
Of temperatures congealing his tropical blood
Of bills and more bills:
Hydro, cable, MSP, phone?
When accomplished and fulfilled
I bid farewell to the ice of Canada
To fry anew
Under African skies
I shall tell tales of love
Found in the jungle of the Nicholsons
I shall tell tales of nuptial fires
Stoked by Colby’s bacchic rivers
Of Phil’s irrepressible jokes
Of Rosie’s furry caresses
Of Ian's computer romps
Of blossoming petals: Shonet, Sheron, Sheila
Colby’s “white sons of a bitch” and “black bastards”
In a communion unburdened by history
Camille’s smiles fresh and foamy
Like Bàbá Ẹlému’s undiluted morning harvest
Yes, I shall tell tales
Of Stanley hosting Mutesa
In the absence of blood and cannons
(Quesnel, May 2000)
Contacts: Toyin Falola
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
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