CONFRONTING THE BOGEYMAN: a review of Olumide Holloway’s Darkness can be Very Dark
Darkness Can be Very Dark is a collection of twenty-seven poems that attempt a conflux of oral and literary artistry. It’s a gritty collection of spoken-word-style poems that’s unafraid of shadows—exploring an impressive range of personal, social, and spiritual themes. There’s a rawness to the emotions expressed in this work that is both honest and authentic. Olumide Holloway goes armed with puns for guns, confronting the bogeyman in the dark alleys of life. He unwraps wounds as dreams—as gifts—with an intention to disrupt, confront and palliate. Sometimes the lines are brutal, delivering knock-out truths. Other times, they offer a torch of imagery, wordplays, and philosophy to diffuse the gloom.
The book starts with the eponymous poem, setting the tone, acknowledging the safety of comfort zones, but also admitting the consequences of staying still outweigh the risk of exploring uncharted paths. The poem explores darkness, in its depth, as a metaphor for life’s struggles, with an emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. Though suffused in personal sorrow and existential conflicts, the tone shifts to light—a call to community and purpose.
Darkness can be very dark
But within me is a flicker
The more I touch other wicks
The more the flicker flames
The poem is structurally ambiguous, lax in narrative cohesion and the heavy reliance on the powerful refrain; Darkness can be very dark, takes it to the brink of overuse. Perhaps it could benefit from slight variations in phrasing across the stanzas, building momentum and more tension in transition.
Today is not the day we die builds on the opening poem’s premise of resilience and survival. Life is a battle—as cliché as that sounds, it’s what these stanzas set out to echo. The poet persona is bruised, battered and bloodied, yet defiant in the face of ceaseless attacks. There’s a vividness to the imagery that jumps at you from the lines, an intensity that transports you to the battlefield. And I pulled the sword from his belly. /His intestines ran out like children freed after school hours. There’s this abruptness in the tonal transition between stanzas—a full swing from gore to sex, then the aporetic. Death will come, /When it will come. /But it shall meet me standing /Probably with a hard on. /When it will come /I know not /But today is not the day I die.
Mr. Holloway comes bare and bold with this book, a social commentary on a variety of themes like mental health, domestic abuse, toxic masculinity, poverty, governance, and pop culture. If Nigeria was a Book is a satirical take, depicting a dysfunctional nation with the use of literary allusions. In Gun, Gum, Rum, Slug, the character contemplates suicide. The poem touches on the illusion of social media friendships, before ending on a less gloomy note—a sudden spiritual awakening, a realisation that his debt of death has been paid.
He lived to die,
So, I can live and not die.
I find Alone in the Crowd tongue-in-cheek in its critique of the consumer culture in the modern music and its superficialness. The poem laments the over-commercialization of music and the dearth of lyrical substance—the thematic emphasis on materialism and the erotic. The poet sees this as an iteration of nonsense. No lyrics /No voice /No sense /Just beats /And more beats /Feels like a beat down. And his frustration is fleshed up in the lines below:
Can’t turn on the radio
No more music to make love to my mind
Just sounds that rape my ears…
Cos money, women, booze and cars
Are all what you need to sing a song
But in the darkness of life, humans seek escape, and art, most times, offers light. Yet, it’s a reflection of the creative and the consumer—sex sells as much as daydreams. And this collection has its fair share of sexual innuendos, which though intended to shock, distract, or amuse, sometimes veer into excess and make light of deep matters. I’m drawn to Coke—my favourite soft drink—served in appealing sensual images. But I can’t shake off the anti-climatic end to the poem. This is one place ambiguity would be a gift.
I have words fingering my brain,
but no one is coming.
So, I am high and dry,
and my brain stays hard.
Still trying to fit the niche,
Oh gee, where is the spot? (No One is Allowed to Come, Pg 31)
The first stanza above is like foreplay. The images are lucid and the wordplay in the last line is witty. But beyond this verse, this poem embodies the challenge of bringing the stage to the page. Where the page begs brevity, the podium demands elaboration, repetition. Puns and wordplays may escape the scrutiny that comes with inked words in a performance. This is one ambitious poem with an extra pinch of everything. While I think If we play on the sheets all day, /Would we excel? feels familiar and extraneous, the next attempt falls flat:
Even if a foreman can’t do the work of four men
I still won’t need four players for foreplay.
One thing King Olulu excels in is storytelling. He brings the action to life before the reader’s eyes—makes you feel every vein pop and hear every creak. You feel the hairs on your neck stand and your spine break into cold sweat. The poems in this book are conversational and engaging, employing internal rhymes, extended metaphors, and brazen but relatable endemic imagery.
The Letters is my favourite in this collection. I love how it defies classification. The blend of epistolary storytelling and prose poetry is fluid. It’s a linear narrative rich in emotional realism—a tale of a pregnant woman sending letters to her soldier husband at the warfront. The poem is a touching exploration of love, longing, hope, loss, and the torture of not knowing. The Letters is devastating but full of grace. It’s like walking away from the light into the night.
I wore your shirt and cried myself to sleep last night. The apartment, the room, the bed seems so lonely and empty without you… I believe you are still alive and I know you will soon come home to meet me and your son. I know you might not have been getting my letters but I’ve a copy of each one of them and I will read them to you when you come home my love. Please stay alive for me and for your son, I miss you, I love you. Please come back to me.
Jide Badmus
Author, Scripture
Bio: Jide Badmus is a poet, editor, and electrical engineer by training. He is the author of four poetry books, including What Do I Call My Love For Your Body? (The Roaring Lion Newcastle, 2022), and several chapbooks. Also the Poetry Editor of Con-scio Magazine, Jide is a noted literary promoter and reviewer. A mentor in the SprinNG Writers Fellowship, and member, board of advisors for Libretto Magazine.
He can be reached via his website http://jidebadmus.com
