Yinka Olatunbosun
Centre-stage was lit. The band members were more than ready for the powerful night of poetic punchlines as the multi-disciplinary artist and storyteller, Wana Udobang entertained her audience in an intimate gathering inside Rele Gallery, Ikoyi recently. Udobang whose work exists in writing, poetry, performance, film and curatorial projects is a leading female poet of her generation with a Gen-Z appeal. Clad in two ultra shades of pink, Wana wasn’t just prepared to be the star of her own show that evening. Perhaps, her mother was the actual star for inspiring the goosebumps-worthy type of performance poetry witnessed at this show tagged “Souled Out.”
Sharing thematic semblance with her 2022 travelling solo exhibition of mixed media installation titled Dirty Laundry, Udobang, popularly known as WanaWana, recounted episodes of childhood trauma, domestic violence, struggles for survival, and cultural memory with spices of romantic lines at this show that was partly tear-jerking and all-round intriguing.
Beginning with the poem titled “Family Portrait,” the poet delivered a narrative poem inspired by her love for photographs. Recalling her childhood fascination with images, she told the story of how, in spite of the domestic troubles in her home, the family portrait was a singular, constant reminder of her family identity and her mother’s physical evidence of family ties.
Accompanied by piano, “Family Portrait” helped to build momentum for a night that would later become emotionally intense. Next came “We Were Girls Once.” Drawing upon personal tales of sexual molestation and the widespread accounts of sexual abuse of minors, Udobang became the sobering voice of the unheard, modulating her voice to a cadence that thoroughly conveyed the agonising memory.
This poem, which chronicles episodes of sexual and physical abuse, was rendered in a mournful, almost tearful tone. With it, Udobang dug deep into the hearts of her listeners to find a sense of connection or understanding and perhaps some measure of empathy.
“Learning is a way for me to survive,” Udobang said during a pause between the performances to give a backstory to each poem to be performed. “A part of me wants to keep learning. My mother insisted that I should learn how to drive even when I didn’t have a car to drive.”
It turned out that driving is a metaphor for a life skill. This laid the basis for her next poem, titled “Things You Learn When You’re With Family.”
That cringing line, “Mom said driving is how women run from their deaths to keep their children alive,” evoked mental images of female protagonists in movies or novels who have to run for their lives from their abusive husbands or partners. The next poem was even a lot more scary, albeit introduced with the subtle, unsuspecting title “Dear Father.”
With reference to tears and dark memories, Udobang had her moment of catharsis. “I was 10 years old when my father left. He passed away two years ago. I was 37. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. The last time I saw him, I was 16. When I heard my father died, I couldn’t cry, but there was rage.”
The rage transmuted into gentle yet powerful lines of disturbing stories that made the poet and her family cold in a hot African climate. In “Thick Skin” lie deeply personal tales of resilience and protest against the poor treatment of the girl child.
“In the boarding school, I got a lot of beating because, as a fat girl, it was deemed that I didn’t feel pain from beating because my skin had some extra flesh.”
Her story of survival and long-suffering continued and was amplified by the one dedicated to her mother titled “Dore.” The upbeat part of the evening were the moments of narrative poems about the food and kitchen, as well as the years of makeshift home distillery. Heightened by Femi Leye’s calypso-themed piano sounds, this delivery was, for the want of words, yummy.
Tearing her audience away from the gloomy mood that crept in, she wrapped up the night with “20,” a romantic poem that expresses optimism about long-lasting love, and the crowd-pleasing poem titled “Take Me Back.” The latter involved audience participation with references to Ten Ten, Mr. Biggs, and other fragments of childhood that enabled Udobang to write her memoir in real time.
