On Sunday the 28th of April, Bibiani Books will be organising a virtual session for the dedicatees of The Tragedy of Being Born Beautiful, a discourse aimed at sampling their opinion about the work.
The Tragedy of Being Born Beautiful an African perspective on timeless human experiences by Cookey Iwuoha was published by Bibiani Books in February 2022 and the poet will be discussing the book with some of the persons it was dedicated to.
The Tragedy of Being Born Beautiful is a thought-provoking, multi-layered collection of poems divided into four parts, Dawn, Sunrise, Sunset and Twilight.
In Dawn, the poet (Iwuoha) concentrates on abstract human relationships while Sunrise takes aim at discouraging social injustice. Sunset addresses the intricacies of emotion and finally, Twilight reflects on the universal search for meaning, self, and identity.
Much like the seasons of man, the poems alternate between tender, angry, helpless and heartbreaking as they address age-old questions and emotions of life’s purpose, man’s inhumanity to man, despair of the soul, hopelessness, and the loss of self-purpose.
Cookey Iwuoha dedicated the poetry collection first to mothers of lost daughters,which his poem of same title identified as mothers of the lost kidnapped girls in Chibok and Dapchi in North East of Nigeria,as well as to all the children that was lost and never found, and to four other persons .
The other four persons the poetry collection was dedicated to includes his god mother Mama Imahkus Ababio, Minister Akbar Muhammad of Nation of Islam, Queen Diambi Kabutusuila Tshiyoyo muata of Congo and his eminence Obi Harris for the inspiration that he has drawn from his reflections on his encounter with their persons and ideology while putting the collection together.
The event will be held virtually and the poet is expecting the dedicatees to speak on different themes in the collection like renaissance of Africa cultural practices, social justice, addiction and irregular migration.
Discussions on the day and the book review will be drawn from 6 poems in the collection titled; Mothers of Lost Daughters, Tragedy of Being Born Beautiful, A Future Stolen, Freedom Enslaved , The Call in Sound of Running Waters and Post Card of Peace.
Not long ago the African Studies Center at Leiden University, the oldest university in Netherland founded in 1575 recently purchased The Tragedy of Being Born Beautiful for their library, the book is slowly gaining traction in the global field of knowledge.
The poetry collection is being slowly accepted as a work that has done justice to its theme of engaging the world from an African perspective on African contemporary issues and challenges.
Cookey Iwuoha is a journalist, prose stylist and poet; dialogue facilitator, columnist and author. The Tragedy of Being Born Beautiful is his 2nd collection of Poetry, his maiden literary work The Contents of Our Empty Graves was published in 2011 and his latest work of fiction an African drama titled Satan Must Not Be Woman was released in 2023.
