Under the Orange Sky… Clinical evocation from quill of a wordsmith

Deborah Yisah is not a celebrated writer but in her debut collection of poems, she reveals a maturity that is hardly seen of new writers. The University of Lagos graduate of creative arts shows a lucid narratives laced with imageries and symbolism.

In her first collection, Under the Orange Sky, published by Redletter Crib signature, she brings together 40 brilliant poems, which demonstrate Yisah’s depth. It reveals her prowess as a poet and her ability to clinically prophesy. She calls her readers to an introspection, wholesomeness and dalliance of art. It is a buffet of well crafted analogies and giving the readers a manual to stay aware of their mental health amid the pain and turmoil under the orange sky.

Released in 2021, the 60-page work invites us into her opulent marionette of metaphors tempering poetic with wit and mellifluous narratives.

Under the Orange Sky interrogates art and the human mind: How the mind finds solace in art, and how art forages in the splendid acreage of the mind.

In this collection, she writes with the zest of an archer, who is shooting arrows of words to deconstruct and defamiliarise everyday issues of life, with precision.

This book traverses different themes of human conditions and how people have sought healing from indulgences and other atypical means of decluttering the mind from paralysing thoughts.

Yisah depicts human life as a complex string of circumstances and how the duality of life is being navigated from different frames of references. She also writes explicitly on love, life, mental health, Lagos, and other pockets of issues.

In the title poem, under the orange sky, she evokes the complex world of a persona seeking to harness the light in his being to stay calm in the midst of troubles and keep hope alive, no matter what.

In another poem, Heal, Yisah uses a tree as a metaphor for resuscitation. Her character is seen contemplating how to stay strong in spite of being fagged out. She draws from her innermost strength and the winery of self encouragement to heal all injuries sustained in the jungle of life.

She equally demonstrates the magic of words and the robustness of literary devices in delivering poignant emotions in the poem, Post Partum:

The poem shows a female persona, who is dealing with Postpartum depression.

She is so worried that she begins to ask herself how she can catch her break in the angst of things spiraling out of control beyond her consciousness, and then reassuring herself about being fine at the end of the turmoil, albeit,

In Fun, she creates a joyful scene where friends, upon graduation from the rainstorm of life, go out to party and enjoy themselves till the sun remembers to rise again.

This debut collection of poems by Deborah Yisah is a baroque of clinical evocations from the quill of a wordsmith whose work will go far to the ends of the earth.