TITLE: FLORA'S LOVE COLONY
AUTHOR: TARES OBURUMU
GENRE: POETRY
NO. OF PAGES: ---
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2025
PUBLISHER: FAIRCHILD MEDIA PUBLISHING
REVIEWER: KEHINDE FOLORUNSHO
It is an indisputable fact that African literature in its nitty-gritty is still appalled by the historical caricature of colonial impulse. This is a portrait drawn from the meeting points of successive generations of African literature – poetry precisely now. On that note, it becomes so obvious that the relic of colonial intervention spreads its tentacles across the subjects of concern from one writer to another. This is more so a given in instances where ideology is cumulative. Therefore, the example of pioneer poets would not be a moribund reflection even in contemporary times. The socio-political crises of African nations remain a structural predicament for which contemporary society suffers under sizzling conditions of systemic devastation. This foregrounds Tares Oburumu’s Flora’s Love Colony as a landmark collection of poems in that order. It is an episodic exploration into the status of Africa’s consciousness in all provinces of historical intervention.
Flora’s Love Colony is a collection of poems that recount the intrusion of imperial fascination with the purpose of Nigeria’s ebullient human and capital resources. Set in contemporary Nigeria, the poems discuss how people are involved in the destiny of a nation and how years of that encounter have resulted in some fatal conditions of disillusionment. This borders on identity relations and ideological displacement. The poems are a resounding rendition of reflective experience whereby a vicarious encounter with the consequence of colonial intervention becomes the bane of the post-modernist sense of identity and ideology. It features characters and settings whose references provide a background to the satirical images of taking a continent as a whole through the axis of an imperialist enterprise.
Flora’s Love Colony takes a light-hearted approach to addressing the romantic passion of foreign influence that unhinged aborigines from their source of artistic knowledge. That is, the temporal settings alluded to in the poems are experiential encounters of historical evidence. While that lasts, the reader can piece together the same subject of argument and displeasure with which the pioneer Nigerian literary pool is still associated. It is this viability that the reader is primed to deduce within the margins of archetypal responses. This may be taken as a bold narrative impression of the nature of the exploits of freedom versus the conditionings of exploitation. In other words, Flora’s Love Colony is a head-on meditation on the dream of a conquistador.
The poems are an adventure into the vast world of interracial affairs, producing for their immediacy the obsession with cultural integrity and boundary sensibility. This in itself is not the ultimate denunciation of the interference so addressed; rather, it undergirds the multiple thematic tours from personal to societal concerns. In the process, Oburumu makes a representation of his contemporary society as both a victim and a beneficiary of the collateral of colonialism. The reader sees in that order the changes and transformation that may have been impossible to achieve, and at the same time could have, by their own civilisation, produced a mechanism of indigenous aptitude to structural development and allied approaches to the dream of a continent.
Additionally, there is an emphasis on the defining crisis of the present age. This anthology posits the reader as the aggrieved; the one for whom the conflict of political disenchantment is most debilitating. The challenges thereof are the consequences of the harsh climates under which it is almost impossible to live the ambitions of the privileges and opportunities of Flora’s colonial investments. The mention of historical figures and events is a coalescent element of reflection. What this suggests is that the outside world propels inner conflicts in matters where society is complicit in the inevitability of disillusionment. This is a continuum in African narratives, although their insinuations have been domesticated by the individual vision of the writer. One of such social visions, which is the yoke of artistic knowledge, is embedded in Flora’s Love Colony.
Consequently, the themes are suited to the reader’s extent of imagination. Already the images are much too potent not to evoke sympathy, empathy, and catharsis even. But a few among the dominant themes are colonialism, political failure, war, civilisation, disenchantment, dreams and ambition, death, history and political knowledge, love and friendship, etc., etc. Predominantly still, the depth of Flora’s Love for the colony of lost society is another emphatic touchstone of Oburumu’s thematic preoccupations. In all, it is engaging how this text is a coherent anthology about the exactness of historical relevance in the structural undermining of Africa’s potential to turn into human capital towards her development.
Without fail, the poems are written in an effulgence of poetic language. True, the style is adapted to the temporal setting; the texture of the language is a functional component of a delectable reading. The metaphors are moving, and the imagery is captivating. But to give a little attention to this, it would be fantastic to discover that the talking point of the poeticity in this collection is the beautiful use of language to cocoon the very effect of what it so much decries, creating an ironically conceived sense of the satire that is second nature to post-colonial, post-modernist, and contemporary African poetry. Although this has undergone some domestication from the perspectives the writers – poets precisely now – bring to the imagination of society. As a result, irony has to be the most intellectually engaging part of the arsenal of literary techniques and devices deployed in Flora’s Love Colony. For one, it touches on the provinces of indigenous delusion. Secondly, it touches on the circle of socio-political crises and their consequence.
All the concerns of colonial intervention are viable in today’s imagination of economic and political distress. Whether they are given personally – to underscore the apologia of movements – or as a collective depression, they are working explanations to our trajectory. Again, the boundaries of race and ethnicity, the tragedy of absurdism, imperialism and identity relations are still evident issues in the young person’s agony of political, economic, social, and cultural obscenities. The nucleus remains satire. Flora’s Love Colony takes the reader through the unending manifestations of European affection for Africa, with the result that the seed of domination continues to grow even in the remotest region of self-redemption.
Kehinde Folorunsho is a Nigerian writer, brand storyteller and literary critic. He is currently a content contributor at literaturepadi.com, a luminary website that offers analysis of literary texts.
