In a world of forms and formations, continuations and ends, there is that constant need for creations and collaborations to take our tales beyond mere spots and basic narratives. Sometimes, we don't have the luxury of waiting to have it all put together or fully formed. Many times, we have to let it go. In some cases, death calls us to put an end to all we had going—whether it is a creative death or that all ending phenomenon that seizes our breath and leaves thoughts and memories of what we once were. In the end, we discover we live with many half-formed things.

This is the spirit of this collaboration of di erent writings by three writers who bring their un nished thoughts—for which creative enterprise is ever fully nished? —together in a chapbook, which itself, is also an incomplete book. They gather together, intentionally or not, a collection of losses centred mainly on death which they share passionately in twelve poems and two tales spread across several pages.
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Ehi'zogie Iyeomoan opens the collection with six poems, penning emotions in rst lines that show the incompleteness of life and everything:

journeys we will never complete for every end opens into new beginnings partitioned into sweet and bitter episodes

He writes on, of nature and time, of helplessness and romance, of admirations, and of a crush. The things that a person can't have—those things longed for, which we cannot hold because they are just out of our grasp: 'fruits you may never taste.' But in between these, Ehi'zogie nds space to talk about the rains in Ebedi, celebrating nature without much else, a ready departure from the rest of his fellow collaborators in this venture. He adds spice to his loss balancing life with death, hope with longing in such ways that show a person in many seasons.

Ikechukwu Nwaogu o ers two short stories. 'Last Day' gives hints of how the tale would end narrating the last day of Chukwudi Okonkwo, a robber who hits it big and decides to 'enjoy' himself as best as he can. He lives the life of a ghetto big man but as the saying goes, who knows the day from night? Lessons can be picked from this tale as we see how fortune favours even the unprepared. There's a big twist in the second story, 'Anna', which is told from uncanny eyes, for when you set your heart wondering what the author is driving at, you discover his slithering scheme and applaud his snaky moves. But like 'Last Day', there's a touch of death but in a somewhat detached manner.

Servio Gbadamosi who rounds o the collection with six poems has pain infused with so much emotion, as noted in 'mending women':

there are depths of pain only the shattered know heights of triumph only the broken scale

It is this pain, largely occasioned by death, that form the crux of his o erings. We nd it in 'For Mary' and 'For Ko Awoonor', two dirges for loved and revered ones lost to carelessness. The persona resorts to asking death to claim him in an untitled poem but seemingly does not get his prayers answered. So, he goes to nd restoration and relief in verse. Again, bleakness takes the stage as seen in 'I found this poem' that ends in, unsurprisingly, death. This bleakness is repeated in the nal poem, 'To a future killed by its past':

Have the gods you so love to serve forsaken you?

when will the West, the East deliver the impotent help promised?

On the whole, one wonders, does the death and bleakness that pervade most of this chapbook have anything to do with the air of despair that surrounds the reality in which these writers live, where pain, sorrow, wars, death and evil are the lot of man? Are they in any way seeking to say that most of those things they live for are gradually getting lost?

Whatever the case is, or is not, one discovers that death is the thread that knits the entire tapestry of the diverse voices of the three writers in this chapbook. Death in many cases is a half-formed thing leading to something complete—eternity, quietness, resurrection (?)—which we might, or might never know. As a chapbook, we know that these works will be extended into longer versions—poetry collections by the poets or even a short story collection by the ction writer. Maybe, there will be more collections and collaborations. Whatever it is, in death or in continuations, the narrative continues and we will be here with our half-formed things, creating new dimensions.

—Su'eddie Vershima Agema

(Winner, ANA Prize for Poetry 2014 and Author, Bring Our Casket Home: Tales One Shouldn't Tell)

Mbanor, Benue State

24th November, 2016