BY PRISCA SAM-DURU

Utimanik Suites, Grace Bill Road, Eket, in Akwa Ibom State, will on March 30, play host to lovers of literature and the state’s Literati as one of Nigeria’s budding authors Godwin Ekpe launches his two poetry books.

The 1998 graduate of Geology from the University of Calabar who also holds a Masters in Geophysics from the University of Port Harcourt, with the release of The Mirror of Self and The Soul of a Poet has ventured into the deep world of poetry.

As a geologist with extensive experience in the oil and mining exploration industry, Ekpe,  who hails from Akwa Ibom by turning to poetry as a proper means of relating to the public, decided not to restrict himself to the wooded world of rocks and earth’s underlays so as to be very relevant in society’s going-ons. To achieve this goal, some of the poems dwell on patriotism and nationalism; some on love and romance; some on religion and the supernatural, while some are based on the beauty and the economic values of the planet Earth. Yet, in quite a number of the poems, the author assumes a crusader-town-crier disposition and lampoons those in positions of authority and leadership.

According to the budding, simmering and compelling born geologist-po’et, the poems are poised to “comfort the distressed; stimulate rational thinking and practice within the polity; charge, encourage, and promote attitudinal reorientation on ethics and moral values; and above all, foster love for Piety and respect for the dignity of humans and nature”.

Certainly, Ekpe is a poet to watch out for as even Comrade John Ukam, fiery activist and veteran lecturer, himself a poet, confirms Ekpe’s writing capability when he said of Ekpe’s book, The Mirror of Self, : “The writer’s art is sometimes very mysterious. In other times it becomes so tangled with human activities, so much so that one begins to wonder why it is so…. To consider a geologist and a geophysicist like Godwin Ekpe to consider writing a worthwhile venture is really interesting. He is not into ordinary writing…”. In the book, The Soul of a Poet, Dr. Ndee Ehirim,  another accomplished lecturer, scholar and writer, noted that, “The author as a richly talented and highly focused ambidextrous personality raring to stamp his identity on Nigeria’s literary garden, especially in the poetry genre”.