By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Viral Poems by Sunny Ayewanu; Bookdoctors Ventures Publishing, Lagos, Nigeria; 2025; 109pp
Some people fight with guns, some others fight with the bomb, but the people I admire the most are those who fight with words. Sunny Ayewanu is one remarkable Nigerian who does his fighting armed with words. Sunny Ayewanu earned international attention with his two poems, “A Man With A Hat” and “God’s Voice”, published in the anthology 25 New Nigerian Poets by Ishmael Reed Publishing, Berkeley, USA, in 2000. The fiery American poet and novelist, Ishmael Reed, visited Nigeria at the turn of the millennium and he is the author of the 1988 book Writing is Fighting: Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper. The matching of Ishmael Reed with Sunny Ayewanu underscores the comparative humanity of writers operating from diverse ends of the world.
Incidentally, Sunny Ayewanu had edited a millennium anthology published by Apex Books in 2001 entitled Passport to the New World. A poem from the anthology, “Scream”, is included in this Viral Poems collection under review.
Sunny Ayewanu has over the years been invited to writing fellowships in Switzerland, France and especially the prestigious International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA. A major endorsement of Sunny Ayewanu’s writing comes from Iowa Gazette, USA thus: “Whether he is working in verse or prose, Ayewanu seeks to break the boundaries of imagination.”
A multi-lingual writer in English, French and Yoruba, Sunny Ayewanu served as the President of the Association of West African Young Writers from 1992 to 2002. He has before the publication of Viral Poems published two collections of poetry, notably Flowering Bullets and Four Seasons of Solitude and Poorverty (Poetry in Bad English)”. He is currently hard at work co-editing an anthology of non-fiction literary travelogue by prominent Nigerian writers titled “The Passionate Traveller”.
Viral Poems by Sunny Ayewanu can be read by all without affectionate ambiguities and complexities. The various sections such as “Viral Poems”, “Traveller In The Starry Worlds Of Discoveries”, and “Style And Passion” are seamless in their renditions.
The COVID-19 pandemic is at the heart of the treatment of the human condition by Sunny Ayewanu. An epidemic that almost wrecked the entire world is treated with endearing artistic detachment by the poet who pays deserving tribute to the iconic Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda.
In the first poem, “We Must Learn To Unlearn”, the poet delineates:
Please don’t dive
for the things you see with your eyes
are yet unseen
They are naked only to the elements
that ride the waves
In “Past Perfect”, we are made to learn that “The day that beaks/did not start its journey from dawn”, and ends with the poser: “How dare you look at his face/&say the red in his eyes/can’t light a cigarette?”
Sunny Ayewanu traverses all the zones and the spheres, even the erotic, as he writes in “When Darkness Gathers”:
In the season of rage
darkness tugs at the armpit
and it strokes the nipples
to rouse an awakening
In the charged hemisphere of Sunny Ayewanu, “My People Perish For Lack Of Poetry”, “This Poem Will Go Viral”, “American Snakes Are Civilized”, and “Your Logic Makes Meaning Mandela” etc. In the epoch of terrorists and terrorism, Mother’s Day turns to “Murder’s Day”. The poem “Witness To Flies (for Gaza)” tells the pain:
They would rewrite the story of a land conquered
with missiles and tanks
and fiery rhetoric coated
in tongues of fire!
A stark warning comes from Sunny Ayewanu in “Corona Chronicles 1”:
Whe you poke your finger
into the eyes of the earth
When you rattle the moon
and redirect the sun
When you grow plants
in space
and cross breed mammals in labs
You will reap the whirlwind someday
There is prose travelogue in Viral Poems, as per “Fete De Nuit” penned in Versailles, France, France, August 21, 1987.
The avant-garde American poet Charles Bukowski wrote: “What matters most is how well you walk though the fire.” Sunny Ayewanu is walking though the fire with panache. His new collection Viral Poems is a laudable testament to his commitment to the craft in his own terms. He deserves celebration for doggedly fighting with the weapon of words.
