In All Shades Of Beauty, Opeyemi dialogues with form, content of poetry

Sometimes, reading a poet for the first time is like meeting a person: the first impression is defining. That is what Oladimeji Olajumoke Opeyemi’s debut is like. With All Shades of Beauty In Colours, you have the opportunity to converse with a poet in spite of herself.

She developed an interest in African poetry during her high school days. There she wrote poems about beauty in her diary. However, the Ondo State-born lady, who earned her first degree in Sociology from the Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, began her dialogues with beauty through makeup, hairstyling, photography and fashion in school.

This becomes obvious in her debut, slim collection, where she has fashioned an oeuvre of elegance, wit and visionary reach in her poetic confrontation with nature.

Her poems unearth presences beneath texts and flesh out an imagined world of beauty.

It is the subtle and delicate skill in the appreciation of beauty in the debut collection that draws the work to a lot of readers. In fact, the presence of beauty on the page is instantly dramatic: a gorgeous sensuality to the writing, which is a reason for readers to stay alert and be on guard.

In I am Sam, while not just obeying poetic canons, she ensures that the lines rhyme regularly. She begins one of the poems this way:
I Am Sam
They say I’ve got the prettiest eyes;
And my breath, like cinnamon pies.

She adds in another stanza:
My poise and posture parry pain;
Gifting gifts with a lot to gain.
I am Sam.
Yes, I am.

In her Beyond The Broken Tooth, she continues with short and punchy rhymes. She favours the short line and combines brevity and sharp line breaks that spurn formal consolations of the high style. The free verse, however, conjures metaphoric images.

She also writes about how women beautify themselves with cosmetics:
My mirror is shy to look at me,
Yet, I find my image projected
By the dim light in the darkness.

All Shades of Beauty In Colours might not convince you like a title, but there is an embattled supplication to which you find yourself. It forces you to pay attention to the wordings and the tone, which albeit is melodic.

This work is filled with purpose, which is ever-present in the collection. There is a momentum, a thespian verve that does not mask the work’s integrity. An imperative clarity to her love for beauty stands out in Mirror Mirror. It is also obvious in I stare into the open sky. She says:
On the wall, who is the fairest
Of them all.
Snow white,
Snow white is the fairest of them all
Her heart is as pure as the streams
Her inward beauty is miles beyond your
physical beauty

Even as she echoes her sound, Opeyemi inhales the sweet, soft smell of coffee, sipping through the acidity with a cathartic feeling. She also turns the reader’s attention to the creative account. Landscapes are painted in a pseudo-anthropological style the better to capture not just the thing in itself but the layered narratives of which beauty is made and contemplated.

She says in Nature Is Beautiful:
Nature
Beautiful from all fronts
Captivating for eyes to see

These poems are flamboyant in content, yet their craftsmanship is as discreet as invisible mending: you will not see the stitches unless you seek them. And it is invisible mending, in the fullest sense.

The poems are written in a manner that makes them to everyone’s taste, with some key omissions making it collected rather than complete poems. Still, the work endures.

Opeyemi, who is happily married, intends to keep appreciating beauty through her poems. Her other poems include Beautiful is Many Levels Below You, Hair and A Thousand falling Lilies.