The Power of Art as Witness: Call Me Down the Rain
Robert Rhodes, ‘Night map (1) so we can always find the way to one another.’ Acrylic, gouache and pencil on Arches paper.
The second Creative Thresholds issue in July was a very special one and perhaps one of the most important ones we’ve done. It was a series of poems dealing with attacks by Boko Haram in the city of Jos and other areas in northern Nigeria. The cycle of poems began when poet Laura M Kaminski (who grew up in northern Nigeria) posted “Call Me Down the Rain” on her Facebook page. Poet j. lewis responded with one of his own, beginning a conversation. amu nnadi contacted Laura and his poem was added to the collection. They continued the dialogue in poetry form from there. Creative Thresholds has the entire series, in two parts: “Call Me Down the Rain” and “Call Me Down the Rain, Part 2.” Artist Robert Rhodes’s paintings accompany the two posts. Please visit and experience the power of art as witness. Here’s the poem that began it all:
Call Me Down the Rain
work-song honoring those attempting to return home to territory reclaimed from Boko Haram
I must dance a circle
bring the monsoon
call me down the rain
pray like someone greedy
give me give me give
more than my share
of this year’s water
bring it bring it bring
the water, carry me the river
call me down the rain
and flood the plateau, bring
rags and buckets to me
you will find me on
my knees and scrubbing
more than red dust
more than harmattan,
I must scrub the northland
clean down to the bedrock
how can we return
to farm and village, how
can we plant new crops
in this earth from which
we’ve lifted the broken
bodies of kin and country
washed them, taken them,
them all, to mourn and bury?
how can we till land
charred from bomb-blasts,
how can we plant when
we keep finding bullet-
casings in the soil?
our lips will not permit
yam and cassava grown
in blood-soaked dirt
to cross them, our bodies
will refuse such tainted
nourishment. no. you
must carry the Benue
here, bring bring me
water, call me down
the rain so I can first
scrub the stains
of blood and bitterness,
scrub until there’s
nothing left but dancing
here, until the stain is
gone from memory,
from sole and soul —
call me down the rain
–Laura M Kaminski (Halima Ayuba)
(first published in Synchronized Chaos, forthcoming in Dance Here, 2015)
Melissa D. Johnston Art 