By Henry Akubuiro
Okwor Maxwell is script writer, Nollywood filmmaker, blogger and creative writer saddled with the responsibility of transforming the society through his pen and impacting positively on human endeavours.
He is the author of many works, including the bestseller, Vengeance of the Spirit, published by Rasmed Publications, Ibadan. He recently published the antifeminist book, The Hypocrisy and Deceit with Feminism Ideology.
Maxwell is a realist who doesn’t dispense with our dark sides for the sake of cheap plaudits. In his new poetry volume, How Love Conquered the World, he tells it as it is: how sweet and bitter love is.
These poems are chiefly dialogues between a man and a woman on the implications of a mature relationship.
Though not a motivational piece, Maxwell’s work is didactic as the author, in this collection, strives to speak to the minds of lovers or wanna-be lovers on needles that can puncture a relationship or knit it into a better whole.
How Love Conquers the World is a book that runs in three sections. In the first, the poet takes a gander at early relationships and the typical experiences among the love birds. The feelings experienced by lovers in the mid life of their relationship echoes in the second. The third section of the book relives the pulse of affection captured when love goes sour. Unconventionally for a poetry volume, however, Maxwell takes a departure by chapterising each poem.
Chapters 1 and 2 feature a character called The Man and another called The Woman, who are engaged in a give-and-take. The Man begins by expressing his admiration to his lover and helping him to build a beautiful world. He confesses to having his heart refreshed with the freshness of love and finding a better reason to love deeper than he has loved before. Again: “Sometimes, I sit in the silence/ of the world, thinking about you and/me-//how you festooned my love with bliss! He even wonders how she has become a farm where he harvests smiles and laughter.”
In response, The Woman expresses how his love has unarmed her. Even the thought of his comeliness and niceties has clouded her mind. Such is the strength of his love that she confesses to being uncomfortable whenever he is not around: “By the bed, I close my eyes,/summoned/a dozen angels to keep eyes on you, /and God to shield you/and bring you into my spread wings.”
In chapters 3 to 10, the love birds rekindle their blossoming love. While The Man declares that the deeper he swims into the “water of you/the more artefacts of pleasure and dreams I crack”, her female counterpart continues her dreamland reminiscences and revisits the arrow of longing and the bond of “inseparable unison”.
From chapter 14, one gets a hint that the love is gradually developing cracks, as romantic words are now replaced with admissions that point to a momentary loss of guard and misgivings. The passion of The Woman, nevertheless, continues to be stronger in this relationship until the last section of the poetry volume when we are led into the register of aches and rifts.
The Woman admits painfully: “I have been crying all day, my eyes have run short of tears, and now, they are filled with fears and pains.” Who would have thought about this?
Over to The Man, and we hear an admission of guilt from him. There is a further breakdown in the relationship when the lady leaves for good, admitting that everything about his man is “too much of a burden”. At the end, idioms of pain, sadness and separation echo in the verses. This poem is about the good and the ugly in a love relationship. Its epistles can find resonances in everyday lives.