Jumoke Verissimo Explores Terrorism And Its Consequences In New Book
Lagos, Nigeria (9/10/15) —Award-winning Author Jumoke Verissimo has just published a new book seven years after her last one. The new poetry collection taps into personal and collective experiences of helplessness, pain and migration, war—its victims. The book, The Birth of Illusion, is a masterful collection that is set to endure in the heart of many readers.
Jumoke examines collective and individual experiences in a global world fast becoming a hamlet, which she explains brings emotion closer home. “The pain in Nigeria is no different from the one in Syria or Cairo or America. Issues like terrorism, or oppression affect us all. The anger in my poetry is a wish to do more—pain is not a good thing to watch in helplessness on the 9’0 clock news.”
Jumoke also explained that she wanted to publish much earlier, “I would have loved to have published a new book earlier, but life happens, and years won’t stop by. I didn’t stop writing, but a new book didn’t just happen fast enough. Anyway, a book in the hand of a writer is never matured, only a publisher helps her case.”
The poetry collection is a successful attempt to capture every emotion in one book, there’s a poem for an emotion out there. The first poems for instance, “Refugee Paradigms” captures the topical human agonies after war. In the “Epiphanies” she connects the flux of love, bearing the feelings in human foibles, heartbreaks,
love, and fears.
Poet, Toyin-Adewale Gabriel in the book’s blurb, describes Jumoke Verissimo in The Birth of Illusion as “establishing her powerful voice in the best tradition of the Nigerian troubadour. *The Birth of Illusion* jumps the gender divide with versatile metaphors, surprising the reader with an informed analysis of contemporary history from Abuja to Cairo and reaffirming that the best poets, like her, are feelers and doers.With a keen eye, she claims loss, blood and love as the themes of The Birth of Illusion. Weaving these themes, she reveals an empathy and a proficiency that is tough, touching and above all, profound.”
Jumoke Verissimo is the author of award-winning collection of poems, I am memory (Dada Books). She also works as a PR Executive, copywriter and content developer.