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Poet-storyteller shines light on trauma

Jumoke Verissimo brings poetic language and sensibility to her acclaimed début novel, a beautiful and sad story of Nigerian trauma and the unlikely friendship between two people who have secrets that are too painful to share. She will be joined by host Lisa Martin in a STARFest presentation on Saturday to mark Black History Month.
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Jumoke Verissimo's book A Small Silence. Verissimo will be in conversation with Lisa Martin for a special event on Saturday, Feb. 29 at the St. Albert Public Library. JUMOKE VERISSIMO/Photo

DETAILS

STARFest After Hours with Jumoke Verissimo
In conversation with host and Edmonton Journal columnist Lisa Martin

Saturday, February 29 from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

Tickets are $7 each and can be purchased at both library locations or on Eventbrite. Visit sapl.ca for more information.

A Small Silence

by Jumoke Verissimo

288 pages

$23.95 for the paperback version

Cassava Republic Press

Jumoke Verissimo is an accomplished poet from Nigeria, now studying in Edmonton. Her homeland looms large in her new writing still, though she has moved into the world of fiction with her acclaimed début novel, A Small Silence, released in Canada just this month.

The novel focuses on a Nigerian activist and retired academic named Prof who was imprisoned for a decade for protesting against the government’s treatment of the country’s disenfranchised peoples. After he is released, he is a shell of his former self, more reclusive and definitely less concerned about railing against the injustices of the world. He just wants to be left alone.

That doesn’t sit well with the community at large: he has become a folk hero of sorts in their minds. One day, a young woman named Desire comes into his life to upset his balance. She’s an orphan who has always idolized him and she entreats herself into his battered psychology. They become friends but they both have secrets. The trauma is a wedge that divides them. It even divides them inside themselves.

The story is a deft study in how systemic trauma can affect the marginalized people in societies dealing with intense civil unrest and massive cultural shifting. It’s a beautiful and sad call to revolution against revolution.

The names of the characters should be the first indication of how Verissimo couldn’t refrain from exercising her poetic sensibilities in her new work. Reading A Small Silence is like reaching into the dark, shape-shifting corners of grief and trying to shine a light on it. It’s tender and mesmerizing, the kind of writing you wish upon all books.

“I've come to realize that there's a sense in which the lines flow but I've also come to realize that I have a deep passion for poetry and that is rooted in my own tradition. The tradition I come from is a very poetic tradition,” she continued.

“I love to see beauty in things. I love to see beyond the physical. I love to connect with things and that is only possible with poetry. So when I write fiction, I find myself moving into that terrain. I tell a story but I tell it in a way that I move beyond what is seen, what is expected. I move ... where people do not expect language to describe things. I move into the unspeakable, which makes it difficult. My fiction stands outside of my poetry.”

The idea for the book, she explained, came years ago when she was a young woman who was visiting a friend. It was a difficult time for them both so they were heavily involved in a broad-ranging and intimate conversation about everything from personal problems to politics. That’s when the lights went out because of Nigeria’s inconsistent electrical grid that meant periodic outages.

“It was one of those days we sat in the dark and we just listened to our talk. Eventually, we just grew silent and the thought came into my head: What does it mean to lead the rest of one's life in the dark?”

The darkness becomes a powerful force throughout the narrative. The author is a skilled craftsperson for taking the language of pain and transforming it into the positive as much as possible.

“I like to move into the thread of things which is beyond the ordinary narration. In a story ... you're telling the story – the beginning, the middle, and the end – and you're trying to find character and typical things but for me poetry is part of my life. It is something that I have come to embody. It's difficult to write fiction without being poetic but my sense of poetry is beyond elevating language. It’s simply to capture that essence that people find difficult to talk about those things that defy language. That for me is what I try to bring into my fiction.”

Verissimo will be hosted by Edmonton Journal columnist Lisa Martin for an after hours discussion to mark the St. Albert Public Library's celebration of Black History Month. The event is also held in support of STARFest.


Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

About the Author: Scott Hayes, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Ecology and Environment Reporter at the Fitzhugh Newspaper since July 2022 under Local Journalism Initiative funding provided by News Media Canada.
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