Project Description
Inua Ellams
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a cross art form practitioner, a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of the Midnight Run — an international, arts-filled, night-time, playful, urban, walking experience. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and a designer at White Space Creative Agency. Across his work, Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in which he also tries to mix the old with the new: traditional african storytelling with contemporary poetry, pencil with pixel, texture with vector images. His three books of poetry are published by Flipped Eye and Akashic Books, and several plays by Oberon.
National Anthem
The mango seed
( you hid in the left corner
under the grand piano
in the back room of the house
in which you were born
on the corner of Joy Avenue
in a warm suburb overlooking
a highway’s traffic
chugging north toward the airport
for long distant flights over
choppy waters, sail boats, yachts
and ocean liners now silhouettes
in the picturesque sunset
where you land and taxi out
to cold, snow-slushed streets
of grey neighbourhoods
and slim buildings
creaking with metal stairs
and small apartments tight
as veins you want to pry open
on the damp bedroom floor
in the right corner
where the keyboard tinkles out
our national anthem )
will still grow when you return.