“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” … “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

These are some popular quotes we more often hear on a daily basis. Prof. Kudo Eresia-Eke must have borrowed a leaf from them or his training as a communicator inspired his book titled, 25 Words of Gold.

Whichever of the above reasons came first, the book is very elemental, enlightening and delighting.

The poetry book launched last week contains 100 poems, each having not more than 25 words. The book is divided into five parts and it speaks about wisdom and reason, love and life, family and friends, attitude and gratitude and pomp and power.

Speaking about his inspiration, Eresia-Eke said, “Through my training, I learnt a few things like if you truly know anything well, you should be able to say it briefly and simply. So that has informed my entire outlook. If you are not able to say something briefly and simply, you should work harder, you need to understand it better, so what you see in 25 words of gold is a reflection of that discipline, the rigour to have the ability to say things simply and briefly so that it can reach everybody.”
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The author emphasised, that each poem gives one something to take away and value for their time.
Against that background, he superimposes also today’s rigour which everyone is in, as well as, considering the rife use of social media, which forces people into writing things briefly.”

He also considered that in todays world, “A lot of people are not reading and secondly, they are having greater difficulty in even trying to follow difficult reading, the type that requires you having to consult a dictionary or an encyclopaedia before you make progress and for that reason, though all genres of literature are suffering a set back but of them all, poetry is suffering the most.”

Even as a professor, Eresia-Eke does not understand why for some reasons, poets believe that the more esoteric that your jargon is, the more high profile, the more of an appeal, it has to be elites to be enjoyed but “I am an African and being an African I know that our poetry is not for some people but for everybody.”

He continued, “If you ever grew up in the village, the songs that were sung and the folklore that were relayed, everything was done in such a simple manner that even a child could understand and they were usually brief not too lengthy so it is that tradition of African folklore and poetry that informs me. I was trained to believe that if you ever knew anything well, you should have the ability to say it simply and briefly. Those constrains gave birth to what I hope will be a continuous train of 25 words in gold as poems.”

Eresia-Eke who writes a poem everyday already has dozens in store to make many other volumes and is ready to publish a sequel with the hopes that the book will reach everybody and schools.
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