The car is enveloped by a swirl of voices fuming over the current state of things in the country, but I am not ready to argue with anyone today. The view by my window calls to me. It’s not glamorous, but I give my eyes to it, to this endless stretch of mountains sparsely topped with trees. To the birds orbiting the mountains. To the school of dark clouds. The car tyres continue to squish as it races along smooth tarmac, and a shiver runs through me. I ponder on the word “beginning.” Does it mean anything to the fluttering birds? Do the mountains anticipate the rain as much as humans do, with excitement? Do they dance in the rain, and allow its softness to slide into their mouths? Do they close their eyes and allow the rain to undress them of the silent years of burning they had endured from the sun? What does beginning mean to me, to my fellow ugly collective members even as we anticipate the release of our first issue?
Beginning can have many faces, and sometimes it doesn’t always mean starting over. It can mean picking up from the point where something beautiful, like a love story, ends. And this comes with deep inner strength, because the one who attempts to even gather the shards and forge on, must do it with great courage. A woman may decide to end a toxic relationship cemented by both physical and emotional abuse. And that is another form of beginning, however difficult, but the woman will try to survive alone, leaning on her inner strength and trusting the lessons she has learned from her previous relationship. But there’s another kind of beginning that happens on a clean slate, without prior skills or experiences. And this type of beginning is a path most people seldom travel because of the uncertainty that dwells ahead. And because they are afraid of failing.
When “The Ugly Collective” was conceived during the Rongo Arts residency held in Benin, I was wary of the idea. I thought it was a concept doomed to fail. I had created the Omenka collective at the time, which featured a group of six writers who assembled on Google meet every Friday to discuss a single short story or essay we had read the previous week. It had been running for four months, uninterrupted, until suddenly, everything crashed: we stopped having our weekly readings and critiquing and the WhatsApp group grew numb and dull; the usual writing prompts and motivational nuggets fizzled out.
I did not know the reason for my nonchalance towards something that had once brought me so much joy, whose beginning stages had caused me to anticipate its future with dread and excitement. Perhaps the writers, whom I had contacted and convinced to be part of the collective, had felt my apathy pulsing through the group, and decided to maintain that rhythm, maybe because the dancers cannot continue wriggling their bodies on stage once the music fades. Maybe because people cannot believe in a thing more than the progenitor of that thing. As such, your conviction in an idea must be resolute, even though everyone else stops believing and supporting you.
So, when “The Ugly Collective” was born after many rounds of back and forth and one of us said, “So, what’s next after naming the collective?” I heaved a sigh, thinking this was the point where the silence became the loudest, extinguishing the past and future. Then, somebody suggested we talk about the logo and a specific design for it.
In the beginning, The Ugly Collective was born from shrouds of arguments, from many nights of trying to find the centre in all matters. But fear and uncertainty continued to rage against my heart and perhaps in the hearts of other residents. I was sceptical of the idea, of its success, and yet I managed to stifle my emotions and tried to lean on the shoulder of hope.
Although the collective hasn’t fully emerged into that desired shape, I am glad that after the tumultuous months of planning, we are able to put together our first issue titled, The Beginnings.
In this anthology, you’ll encounter many bold works that bring us into unforgettable experiences, into worlds where starting over or just starting out comes with trepidation, excitement, angst and complacence. And all of these come at a cost: sometimes it’s a small, almost flimsy demand as in Taofeek’s Let me be Water, where the persona seeks to assume a variety of forms, “like a spider weaving a geometry of home and trap.” Or “like the weaverbirds in a stranger’s yard, picking grains.” These are simple wishes that trace the trajectory of hope and succour, as in the endearing line, “Let me be a breeze rushing into a stuffy room.”
Sometimes, starting over doesn’t just obey the snap of your fingers. It comes with uncertainty that morphs into hesitation. And this hesitation is born from the crushing realization that something once beautiful and tender and that made the heart pulse with desire, no longer exists. This pain can be felt in Taiwo’s poem, Of Things That Can’t Be Folded Into Metaphors, in the capsules of words stripped of their metaphors. So that each line pulses with clarity and the weight of the persona’s loss, as in “Is this what it means to swallow the saliva of closure & yet, watch your throat struggle at dissecting its accent?”
Other times, starting over can mean arriving at what should be the end of the road and realizing that you still hold the reins of your life. This can be seen in I Am Still Here, where a young woman’s life is redefined when she becomes pregnant for her brother and embarks on a journey to stop him from tying the knot with another woman. In a devastating turn of events, she realizes that she doesn’t need her brother or her mother’s approval and love. She touches her stomach and knows that the strength she needs is growing within her.
This issue brims with poems, essays, fiction and artworks that tug at the heartstring, works that encourage as well as break us. A language that beckons us to pause for a moment and reflect on our lives, decisions, on the world and many things we take for granted. I hope you encounter the works in this anthology with gusto, longing and a sense of hope, as I have encountered them.
Gerald Ewa
Managing Editor, The Ugly Review