Inspiration

IJAGUN POETRY JOURNAL acquires it name from “Ijagun,” the location of Tai Solarin University of Education, the premier university of education in Nigeria, where I earned my first degree. Ijagun is a Yoruba word which I will roughly translate as WARRING. Ijagun is the home of violence and peace and something I can’t even align with any of these categories. But I must confess, Ijagun means a lot to me. Ijagun is the place where I have learnt all that I know today; it is the place where my genius is made. The creative potentials that Ijagun houses, which I have seen first as a student in this location some years back and now as an academic in the Department of English, serve as the creative force that births this idea. Ijagun has given a lot to me and I have always thought of the way I could give back to this academic community. I think promoting its creative resources and institutionalising its name in the same cause would serve a purpose. But I am still not sure if this would really commensurate what Ijagun has made of me.

It is pertinent to note that “Ijagun,” for me, transcends the “small” location in the map of Ogun State; it becomes a metaphor of life in my imagination. Life is war as claimed in a Yoruba adage. Though life is war, not all fight the war! Some initiate it, some bear its burden. Some die in it, some flee from it. Some lose everything in it, some claim its spoil. Even in war, there are moments – moments of celebration, moments of mourning; moments of conquest, moments of surrender; moments of laughter, moments of sorrow; moments of courage, moments of fear; moments of relief, moments of tension; moments of madness, moments of sanity; moments of life, moments of death, and there are even moments that foil any form of description. War/Life does not possess a single story.

Thus, poetry is a living form through which we can spin the web of life.

Welcome to Ijagun!

Gabriel Bamgbose
The Editor