Nigerian-born poet Abby Kesington, who featured at the 2023 Color: Story, a biennial collaborative visual art and poetry exhibition created by artists Marlo Saucedo and Leslie Gaworecki to bridge creative worlds, is slowly but steadily carving a niche for herself in the Houston art community, writes art journalist JOHN AKINS.
The Silos at Sawyer Yards regally sits between Edwards and Winter St in Houston. The building, with a large metal sign that reads “The Silos” on the top left corner, has an orange door with the inscription “studio entrance.” It was through this door that Nigerian-born poet and one-time reporter with Daily Independent and Tell, Abby Kesington, Houston Poet Laureate David Appleton and over 20 other poets and several artists and art lovers found their way into Gallery 100 for the 2023 Color: Story, a biannual event with the objective of bridging the gap between visual arts and poetry.
Like others, Abby Kesington got the invite to be part of the show, and thought of what to do with it. She eventually submitted an entry titled ‘Finish Line’, a poem with imageries of the skyline, sunshine, clouds, rain and coastline. It is an inspirational piece that screams “when life storms like a feline/ Tearing down your baseline/ Leaving you without an anchor/ Remember the sun still shines”. The piece adds that “when friends go offline/ And no help from the bloodline/ Remember the sun still shines”.
Weeks after she submitted this poetic piece that preaches optimism in the face of challenges, she got a congratulatory letter from the organisers. She is one of the chosen. Many fell by the way side. The victory seems a confirmation that poetry has found her.
And on April 8, she stood before an audience of artists, poets and art lovers to read ‘Finish Line’ at one of Houston’s most iconic silo buildings.
Screaming, applause and more greeted her recital when she got to the touching last line:”That it was all by design to bring you to the finish line.”
There is an interesting story to the poem ‘Finish Line’, which the organisers fittingly paired with the visual art of Rodrigo Aguilera.
“I wrote that poem,” Abby Kesington recalled, “on a very challenging day when it seemed all hope was lost.”
The poet was battling what she described as “a monster anxiety”. Words came to her rescue.
“I was able to put things in perspective and sustained my sanity.”
Abby Kesington, whose poems usually focus on anxieties, freedom, women rights, poverty, and climate change, managed to contain her excitement about the reception of her rendition.
“I was nervous about this but I’m happy it went well,” she said.
Her nervousness is not unconnected to the fact that she is more of a poetry for the page person.
“When I started, it never crossed my mind that I will ever read it on stage. It was a form of therapy to just let out those words buzzing in my head. So I think poetry for the page comes easier for me but I’m very much open to new opportunities of poetry on stage,” said Abby Kesington.
She sees no need for some literary critics who tend to dismiss spoken word/performance poetry as not poetry. “I think the goal is to have the reader or audience appreciate your work. Poetry is a form of art that is blessed with an advantage to have the words perform before an audience. Now reading the poem aloud sometimes lend credence to the work and it is very much left to the audience at that point.”
As a child and young adult, Abby Kesington read everything from her father’s Hints magazine to suspense novels and thrillers to the novels of Camara Laye, and Chinua Achebe. Though she studied Political Science for her first and second degree, writing was her first calling and she worked with two of Nigeria’s renowned newspapers and magazines, Daily Independent and Tell.
Like most writers, Abby Kesington doubted her poetry; she thought she was just doing it to fight her ‘inner demons’.
“Poetry found me at the doldrums of life, when all hope was lost and I didn’t have anything to live for. It gave me renewed hope in humanity. A renewed sense of self. Don’t get me wrong, I still fight my inner demons,” she said.
She is not unaware of the burden of tradition for many Nigerian poets to write poetry that tends towards the socially committed poetry, which ace performance poet Efe Paul Azino once described as ‘art in the shadows of protest’.
“Poetry is an expression of the experiences of the poet. Now because of the social economic climate or should I say injustice, many of the poems from Nigeria seem to take on the narrative of protest. However, my poems are a kind of protest against social differences and the seeming injustice of race, gender, age and abuse, not necessarily in the Nigerian sense.”
Poetry, she says, means a form of expression. “Beyond the art is the poet’s experiences all morphed into words. A window to the poets’ mind and sometimes heart.”
She is an apostle of the modern form of poetry, but with some sentiments for the old sonnet. “I like the modern forms because the poet is not boxed into a form. You have the freedom of expression. Juxtaposition of prose and poetry, imagery and concepts that push the norm. I like that very much.”
Her literary influences are diverse. The list includes Nigeria’s Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, the late American poet Maya Angelou and the Chilean poet, late Pablo Neruda.
Abby Kesington’s poems seem to draw their ideals from the words of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera who said: “A woman writer must have an imagination that is plain stubborn, that can invent new gods and banish ineffectual ones.”
She desires poetry to deliver her to posterity. She wants her poems to outlive her.
“For generations to come to read my works and see that I identify with issues like anxieties, freedom, women rights, poverty, and climate change,” she said.