There are four sections and 40 poems in this collection. The collection, Entropy, published by Noirledge in 2026, is authored by Servio Gbadamosi, an award-winning poet and publisher. His debut collection: “A Tributary in Servitude,” won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Poetry Prize in 2015. And his second collection: “Where the Light Enters You,” was a finalist for both ANA Poetry Prize in 2021 and Pan African Writers Association Poetry Prize in 2022. Servio is a sought-after speaker at literary festivals.
The poet opens the collection by playing on the cyclical nature of life. In the poem: “I return to you,” the poet persona writes that the new even in its newness looks like the past. “… and the putrid smell/of past years return/in spite/of the fragrances of the new,” and “We look at the new year/with old eyes/pouring new wine/into an old wineskin…” This is the same sense in Questions for Godot. Besieged by endless questioning by loved ones, the poet persona is left to wonder why many things, including nature, have defied answers. The poet is left to query the very essence of being, of trying to find meaning in life’s seaming meaninglessness. The poet finds himself in a big dilemma – that of falling into another trap of slavery while trying to escape from a nation that enslaves you.
In the collection’s first part, in the third poem: “The dream of a pagan poet,” the poet persona continues his metaphor of the unending bouts of life. This time, he proves that life experiences “a bloom,” but momentarily. This is indeed the nothingness of being. The poet seems to have reached this conclusion when he submits: “For we were made from nothing./Of nothing,/we become something/by a brief breath- /and return, again/to nothing.”
In this collection, the poet writes to romanticise nature. One of the poems gives us the multi-level utility of the Benue river.
It is the melting pot for all who desire freshness. Shepherd boys go for a drink from her bosom, their sheep get refreshed, farmers find solace in her supply of freshwater and tourists find fun around her.
In the second section of the collection: “Entropy,” the poet opens with a protest against the continued colonial incursions on his country. He pitches his tent against those who brought religion from the West to capture his people, and then shipped his kinsmen into slavery. The poet seems to come to the conclusion that the incursions of the colonialists and their religion, promise of emancipation and their trade are myths. He writes (p27): “But now I know the/messiah is not coming -/the same dance that draws/the world to us is the same/rhythm that breaks our bones.”
And this also links intricately with his theme of cyclical nature of life and nothingness, because for him, “They kill our joys/and ask us to sing,/to clap, to dance as/our past and future/are shipped away to/fortify their glittering/cans of worms.” This cycle, for the poet, is akin to nothingness: “In the end,/all things, it seems/are lost/to meaninglessness.” He writes also in the poem, Desire is a restless traveller (Pp43, 44) that the cycle continues, and we arrive at the same destination, where “another sky” stretches into sameness and we are all like a restless traveller who “never stays where it has arrived.” For the poet motion is the principal thing, for “fulfillment is not the destination,” and to stay gratified, one must find oneself within the motion.
Again the poet takes his protest to the doorstep of those who are bent on killing our consciousness of history, of our culture and free thoughts. He lambasts the government for its revision of history, distorting history by renaming ancient landmarks, and adopting the counsels of the West whose agenda is to denigrate our mind. In the poem The world is going to war (Pp 30, 31) the poet is visibly angry that we are being dissuaded from reciting our own African stories because donors and funders with sinister agenda now give “Grants that cut out/the tongues of our storytellers.” Again, he queries why our government listens to those who are bent on “dismembering of the African body, the African mind”, the big pharma who feed on the blood of the people, impose genetically modified seeds and turn “our bodies into research labs for cancer and profit.”
In this work, the poet is permanently garbed in his toga of activism. In one of the poems, The sky above Gaza, the poet lashes out on the false promise of aids that cannot assuage the plunder and poverty of victims of the carnage in Gaza. This poet deploys the paradox of peacemaking and hypocrisy of the peacemakers. He wonders how food can fall “from the same sky that burns,” because no amount of aid or charity can end hunger when we cannot stop the bombs. In the same vein he calls into view, the plunder of his motherland by the colonialists who shipped away our solid minerals along with children of the land who are “stolen into graves of labour” in their millions, and calls out their blatant hypocrisy. He lashes out: “Tonight, the same country drops/food into fire, seeking to feed the/living with the currency of its past.” He calls this a joke by a country trying to goad the people into forgetfulness.
The poet persona conveys the imagery of lost hope in his motherland, and hinges it on the lost “three decades” of misrule heaped on the people by thieving politicians. The consequence of this misrule is a divided, fractured country from which the poet’s friends in exile, who now beckon on him to also bolt from the country. For these comrades of the poet, “it is easier to love your country from afar/when your life is no longer tethered/to a thieving politician’s grace” (p34) than to swim “in the dark waters of hate and lack.” Indeed in the poem Before the darkness builds its tent, the poet persona reasons with his friends in exile, and calls on his lover to join in leaving the land before another carnage catches up with them.
The poet also writes for children who are locked in internally displaced persons camps in the country. In Where the laughter used to live, the poet pens a lamentation for these children who have been shortchanged by negligent government and the world that looks away when the children seek answers.
In this collection, Servio Gbadamosi writes on love, the human condition. He writes dirges for his friend and his father. The poet writes about death both as a leveler, and as a continuum of his theme of nothingness of being and the unending cycle of life. He writes (p57) that “Every newborn is an elder returning/to the joy of sadness./The future is dead to the past,/and time is a hunchback walking in circles,/tracing the same old paths with new feet.” He writes too, about loss, and lambasts those he calls ruiners of the land (p74) whose agenda is “to steal the very ground/upon which our tired feet crouch…” The poet now sets out a catalogue of things that his land and people have lost, including how we have abandoned value and cannibalised our culture, intellect and art in order to please “western eye” pittance and “decadent profit.” The poet continually reminds his reader about the essence of nothingness in The new nothing and What happens before nothing. And he has splashed the collection with many lines in praise of love, fatherhood and family.
With this collection, Servio Gbadamosi has successfully deployed his arsenal of potent imagery and keen awareness to dig into the past and explore the present, doing so with dexterity. He expands his interrogation of life itself and some personal reflections, and presents his query of faith and governance. It is a collection with an attitude. And it is worth exploring for all lovers of the arts, who also desire to have moments of deep reflection. With Entropy, Servio has, for the third time, shown that he is a potent voice.
. Olatunbosun can be reached via 0802-351-7565 (SMS & WhatsApp only) and [email protected].
