These essays are responses to aspects of the times. They are called poetic essays because their meaning is also to be found in their form. In some places a page is compressed into a line.
The aphorism is a tincture that dispenses with superfluous words. A thought ought to persuade by itself, by its truth and balance, the simplicity of its line, the clarity of its contour.
The cue is taken from drawing. A single line can lead the mind to terraces of contemplation. Naturally it depends on the line and the view.
Reading is an inner event. This is its abiding mystery. My art is often about getting out of the way. Sometimes though it is necessary to thunder, to waken with gongs and bells, to draw attention to what is coming, what is being done to us.
New dreaming is essential when times are difficult. It is through imagination that we transform time and compel new futures.
To dream here is synonymous with creating a new world in the mind, then shaping it with love and will. All true dreamers are heroes and heroines in the tough business of making possibilities real in the world.
Every book is a time capsule containing some essence of the period in which it was created. Writers speak to the future through the connecting membrane of time and the mind.
Every true book is a secret record of what the writer wrestled with in themselves and their times, what forces they summoned to help them through.
BEN OKRI
Little Venice, London, 2019