How to win?
Read the current publications on the SLM website for April 1-30, 2018. Write a comment on 2 or more of the publications posted on the SLM website for April 1-30, 2018.
Please add your name and email address when filling the comment box. Note: Email address will not be made public.

See the guide to providing good feedback below

TIPS FOR WRITING GOOD FEEDBACK
The goal of providing feedback is;
1. to invite another reader into the world of beauty you have seen in a work
2. to provide a very brief summary of what you read. 
3. to give your interpretation/perspective of what has been written.
4. to provide suggestions for improvement.

We encourage that your comment meets at least 2 of these goals.
The SLM team will evaluate the comments and select the winner of the book at the end of the month.

Note: Comment on the poems, book review, interview and guest posts.

Tega Ohwerhoye hails from Delta State, Nigeria. He holds an M.A (International Relations) from Coventry University (UK); and a B.A (English [Literature Emphasis]) from Redeemers University (RUN), Nigeria where he served as the department’s Public Relations Officer (2011-2012). He currently works as an Administrative Officer in a Housing Firm. He has worked with the Debt Management Office (DMO); National Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and BMG Research, Birmingham, UK as a Market Research Agent. He taught Literature-in-English at Darlington Crest College, Abuja, Nigeria and is also a member of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Network. He loves music and paintings.

Connect with Tega

How and when did you start literature writing?
I started writing in 2010 when I took a Creative Writing course back in school. I remember the lecturer coming into class one day, then he said we should look around us and write down whatever came to us from what we saw. That was my first real attempt at literature writing.
 
Do you remember the first poem that you wrote? What was it about?
The first poem I wrote actually meant a lot to me and it was titled “Rainbow Veins”. I started thinking of the rainbow as a being and as I did that, the colours started to mean other things to me; I began to see how we sometimes share similarities with the inanimate.
 
What inspires you to write?
People and things I experience are my main writing inspirations.
 
How has mentorship contributed to your writing?
I had a lecturer who was my mentor. He wrote only critical essays and helped to put my work in check; to see that I could actually find meaning in what I wrote. Also, when I am done with a piece, one of the first things I do is ask questions my mentor would have asked.
 
Which writers have been most influential to your writing?
Musicians have had more influence on my writing and I like to think that a real musician is first a writer. However, being exposed to James Baldwin and Langston Hughes did a lot for me.

My writing journey started with falling in love with literature; enjoying the reading of African literature especially and trying my hands on writing every storyline, conversation, imagination and things that flood through my mind in all genres - poetry, drama and prose; but it wasn’t enough to build me as a Writer but it was enough to sustain my interest in Literature and Art. What am I trying to say? There is a point in your creative life where you come to the realization that your desire for literature and everything art is not because you enjoy it alone but because it makes you feel alive. How did it make me feel alive? Every time I craved that my pen bleeds, the only way I get to feel like I’ve had a complete day was if I scribbled something even if it’s one; the desire to be better at it; the crave to write like someone; the desire to put my work out there; to replicate the same feeling the writer of whatever book I’ve read in someone else and that right there is not normal! Only a Writer feels that way not an enjoyer of Art! An enjoyer of art only gets and feels the message, becomes impressed, feel sober, celebrate and laud the ingenuity of the owner of the work of art but a Writer experiences it all! She is the passer of the message and the enjoyer of it!

​BOOK REVIEW: To Bee A Honey by Kehinde Badiru
Title: To Bee a Honey
Genre: Poetry
Author: Oyindamola Shoola
Publisher: Createspace
Year of Publication: 2017
Number of Pages: 94
ISBN: 978-1542954174
Reviewer: Kehinde Badiru

As she opens what would become a soothing performance in our heart(s) as well as a communion with the bees that lives in us, we can only wait to see what the future holds for us in Oyin’s preponderances. It is true that everyone has a spark in them, for Oyin that spark is that for sweetness.

Oyin becomes a singer of sweet tunes with the bees in her. Her voice is yet distinctive out of several other voices. As a new migrant to the United States of America, she is faced with the stark realities of transnationalism, migration and culture shock. For me, the cover page was the magic that walked into the deepest part of my hearts as a graphic artist.

He was shrewd at getting her heart melted
As they dialogued at one coffee-corner in the dark
Adelé wasn't in the mood to fall for the grind of his pestle
She had stayed at one side in the heart of a mortal
Just to get warmth from the talented hole created therein
Until Àyìnlá came to touch the soft part of her yam
And her obsequious part picked to kowtow to his claro call

Dreams are the seedlings of realities
Grown from the seeds of thoughts
Planted in the dark soil of the mind
Under the psychic atmosphere of sweetness. 
 
Dreams are the shadows of life
Ghosting around the thoughts realm
Like solemn spirits catching rides
On the lanes of dark k(nights).

With each word i wrote, a little deeper she fell,
For each sonnet was a piece of her soul that i could spell,
Eventually the writer’s block came and stole my words away.
She left a while later when i had nothing to say.
Heartbroken, Wretched and left with an empty hole.
I pondered who she loved, me, my words or her soul.
Xxx.

6A deserted house sits on a tree
Sometimes the tree is fair
And grows leaves on every branch and stem
So that the house is hidden
Sometimes it disagrees that a house can be tired
Tired of arrivals that turn to departures and of being both
Of birds reaching home at dusk
Empty, without whistling
And leaving again at dawn
Leaving feathers and tales behind
A house can be tired of having half songs bounce off its walls
Sometimes the tree does not understand how a house can be tired of being a house