In this riveting collection of poetry, Maria Ajima engages in a panoramic exploration of life in its various facets, dwelling on its beauty and maladies. The poet takes her reader through a journey of life, offering her special perspective and insight on diverse subjects including nature, the ephemerality of human life,failed leadership and the insincerity that pervades human relationships among other pertinent themes.

Like most modern generation Nigerian poets, Ajima’s poetry is mainly accessible to the everyday poetic connoisseur, not in the mundane sense of “plainness” but in a manner that is profound and sublime. Her poems are belied by the seeming simplicity and playfulness that tend to enthrall her readers and take them beyond themselves to a world that expresses universal and plausible truths that they can relate to.

Ajima in Soft Winds displays a new direction in her attention to the environment and nature; yet, it is not as if she follows the Romantic tradition in idolizing nature. Rather, her nature poems are in the tradition of the imagists where nature is dispassionately enthroned in its immediacy and actuality, thus capturing the beauty of the instant as it happens.

This is why the readers can relate to the images that she creates and derive immense pleasure from them. Away from the strident tenor of many modern Nigerian poets, the poet approaches the world with a teasing somberness and candour wherein lie a buffet to sate disparate tastes from climate activities, football lovers, humanists to philosophical buffs.

The work is a delight and pleasant to read. Ajima’s poetry comes with rawness of being human in a world full of mystery and the wonders of life.

I invite all poetry lovers to partake of the feast of words deftly put together by a poet of our time. By Leticia Mbaive Nyitse a poet and Professor of African and American Literature and Gender Studies; Deputy Dean Postgraduate School, Benue State University Makurdi.

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