2016 Winner of the SprinNG Poetry Contest
The winner of the annual SprinNG Literary Movement Poetry Contest (2016) is Ogedengbe Tolu.
Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact is a chemical engineering graduate of the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. He started writing poetry in 2012, and his poems have been featured in different anthologies, including SPIC Love Poems anthology, Peace is Possible anthology, Muse for world peace anthology, Nibs Tears Justice before peace anthology, and 2015 Wind of Change anthology. Tolulope was the winner of the June Edition of the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (BPPC 2016) organized by Words Rhymes and Rhythm(WRR)
Read the Winning Poem below.
THE NEW GODS
Yesterday...
Our fathers reverenced the ancestors' altars
With lowered gazes of bowed heads
And with sobered hearts, they poured libations
To appease their fury gods.
Our elders cowered at graven images
Like timid dogs before dead foxes
And with chorused voices, they chanted incantations
To offer their cowries of pleas.
Our mothers took refuge in sacred shrines
Where strange fires of blind sacrifices
Were prepared with stale sticks of traditions
To break the shadowy arms of discomforts.
But today...
We defile the altars of our ancestors
With the fermented urines of our children
And we hurl the rituals of our fathers
To the wandering wind of oblivion.
We break the vows made by our mothers
At the navel of the village square
Where the piety kola nuts of fortune
Were revered by the molars of our elders.
The venerated relics of native oracles
Are fired into forgotten ashes
And we flaunt around as new gods
Who feed not with broken gourds.
Ogedengbe Tolu
2016 Winner
