OkadaBooks and the Poetics of Uplift

Abstract

This article studies collections of inspirational poetry published on the Nigerian online platform and app, OkadaBooks. OkadaBooks lets users upload and access ebooks for free or at a low cost. Nigerian inspirational poetry can be seen as a hybrid poetic form that borrows from motivational speaking, self-help and religious pamphlet literature. The collections are marketed to readers as works of literature that through their literary qualities and poetic language can inspire the reader to create a better future for him- or herself. The main argument in the article is that the poetic and rhetorical devices that are used in this literature, which I propose to call the poetics of uplift, can be read as instrumental in the commodification of the text. The poets foreground the relevance and value of their texts through the different ways in which they promulgate a view of poetic language as having the power to change people’s futures for the better. The article looks specifically at how poets use literary devices such as the use of the pronoun ‘you’ and the imperative grammatical mode to speak directly to the reader and further considers how these poems explicitly celebrate language and the very concept of poetry.

Keywords:

• digital literature
• Nigerian poetry
• addressivity
• commodification
• motivational poetry

This article studies what I propose to call the poetics of uplift in collections of poetry available at OkadaBooks, a Nigerian, free-use book reading and publishing mobile application. The authors of these collections refer to their poetry as motivational or inspirational, and describe the potential effects of their poetry on the reader as uplifting. This inspirational poetry can be seen as a hybrid form that borrows from other popular forms of literature, like self-help and religious pamphlets, love and religious poetry and different forms of autobiographical writing. The poems are relatively simple in terms of composition, often rhyme and are typically written in free meter. They are also normally short and thus arguably more suitable to be read on a smartphone than longer narrative texts. Though it is not warranted to refer to these collections as belonging to an easily definable genre, the collections that are available on OkadaBooks have formal features in common with each other and with printed collections of inspirational poetry from different parts of the continent.

OkadaBooks has capitalized on the trend of self-publishing in Nigeria by allowing users to turn a digital manuscript into an e-book that comes complete with cover, flyleaf, pagination and other components of a traditional printed book (Betiang and Akpan 24). Named after the popular motorcycle taxis that are ubiquitous in Nigerian cities, the platform was conceived in response to the ‘traffic jam in the book distribution space in Nigeria’ caused by ‘poor’ infrastructure of distribution and high printing costs on the Nigerian book market (‘What is OkadaBooks?’, cited in Hållén ‘OkadaBooks’). The metrics presented at the homepage indicate that OkadaBooks have been at least partly successful in this endeavor; In October 2018, OkadaBooks reached 200,000 users, who had collectively downloaded more than a million titles (‘What Is OkadaBooks?’). Users download books for free or at a modest price – typically somewhere between 200 and 1500 Nigerian Naira (roughly 50c to 2,50USD), which makes the text accessible to readers who lack the financial means to buy more expensive printed books.

The way in which texts are marketed to readers in the OkadaBooks app may tell us something about the relation between technology, the economy of literary production and literary form. The OkadaBooks app is designed to help authors sell their books to users and to help users find them. Authors can write their own blurbs, by tagging them by theme or genre (or ‘category’ as it is called in the app) and by getting stars-ratings and positive comments from users. Many of the eight hundred or so titles in the poetry section of the app present themselves as having an instrumental value for the potential buyer and reader by being spiritually and existentially uplifting. One poet promises that the poems in his collection ‘are taken from the belly of deep knowledge of life, Revealing top secrets of what life entails’ and that they ‘open the mind to wide areas of life that seems unclear to mere human understanding of earthly journey [sic]’ (Mechark 4). Similarly, OkadaBooks users who consider buying Olivia O. Nsofor’s Unparalleled Emotions (2017) are assured that ‘if you are broken, you’ll heal, if you are healed, you will be restored’ by reading her poems and Isoken Adisa-Isikalu’s proclaim that her poems will ‘soothe the spirit, no matter the challenges you are facing’ (no date).

The uplifting effect that such collections of poetry claim to have on the reader contributes to the perceived value of the text commodity. Regardless of whether the reader believes that the poems will actually have this effect or not, uplift is part of the product the reader invests in when downloading these books in the app. In the blurb to Tolu A. Akinyemi’s Dead Lions Don’t Roar (2017) we are told that this ‘is a collection of inspiring and motivating modern day verses. Addressing many issues close to home and also many taboo subjects, the poetry is reflective of today’s struggles and lights the way to a positive future.’ It is ‘uplifting’ and should appeal to ‘anyone going through change’ since it inspires ‘a sense of peace and wellbeing’. In the preface to the book Akinyemi fashions himself as a guide or mentor to the reader and urges the latter to have faith in the collection’s ability to transform his or her life. He writes that the collection has been ‘written to inspire change in as many lives as possible’ and that it will ‘help us to re-invent ourselves in our work, business, relationships, marriages, and put our talents to good use’ (11). The blurb for another of his collections declares that Akinyemi’s writing ‘has didactic elements for evaporating the effects of peer pressure and criminality’ and that the poems offer guidance in ‘finding your inner talent, celebrating your individuality and distinct voice’. In his poetry, the reader is most often addressed in the didactic and direct second-person form, which aids the poems’ encouragement to the reader to stay positive, to not get dragged down by hardships and to not lose faith in God. In ‘Yes, You Can’, from his second collection of poetry Dead Dogs Don’t Bark … And They Don’t Bite: A Collection of Poetic Wisdom for the Discerning (2018) the interlocutor addressed in the poem is encouraged to ‘Banish the voices that say you can’t / The voices that say you are not good enough’ (lines 1–2).

The following analysis studies the poetics of uplift in a number of collections of motivational poetry. Some of them, like Akinyemi’s two books, are available through print platforms like Amazon, but here I am interested in how the books are presented specifically within the digital space of OkadaBooks, which professedly targets an African audience (‘How one company is recycling the publishing wheel’). The main argument that this article puts forward is that the poetry of uplift that is so pervasive in self-publishing forums across Africa today presents itself as having a use-value and that this, in turn, determines the poetics of the work of literature itself. Furthermore, the ways in which the aesthetic and formal elements of the poetry are predetermined by the online, self-publishing app form are of interest here. That is to say, in addition to the pleasure that the reader may get from enjoying the poetry, these texts promise their readers that they will become motivated to try to overcome their struggles and move towards a brighter and more prosperous future.

Uplift and the Promise of a Better Future

A recurring poetic device in inspirational poetry is the construction of a brighter future in which the hardships of urban everyday life have been overcome. This imagined future is presented as a goal that may be attained if the advice offered by the poet is heeded. Ivie M. Eke’s ‘One Day’ describes a future that will be less fraught with hardships and obstacles than the present: it is a future in which one will ‘sit and ponder what it all meant’ and realize that all the hurt has dissipated (lines 1–2).

One day, you will realize that you have let go of the

past and every resentment.

One day you will have a big smile, and enjoy

bountiful contentment. (lines 22–24)

The brighter future comes into being in two ways: it may be the reward for patience and a result of one’s efforts to get ahead in life, but it also emerges as an idea and a poetic image through the poetic language itself. However, in contrast to self-help and religious pamphlets, Eke’s poems do not offer much in terms of practical or spiritual advice on how to live and behave in ways that increase the chances of improving one’s life. What they do (ostensibly) offer is the motivation to remain patient and determined to better oneself and one’s circumstances.

By presenting themselves as possessing an instrumental value to the reader, collections like Eke’s may be seen as belonging to the same body of popular West African literature as self-help and religious pamphlets circulating in cities like Lagos and Accra. These cheaply printed pamphlets are sold in churches, on the street and in bus stations for a comparatively modest price, often by the authors themselves. Typically, they offer their readers advice on everyday concerns and religious matters (Newell 20). Self-help pamphlets that offer guidance in the reader’s efforts to become rich and successful and to find someone to marry are also popular on the OkadaBooks app, where users can buy and read pamphlets like Getting him to Stay (Boy 2014), How to Attain Financial Security and Stay in Financial Abundance (Ayodele 2018) and Why You Must Urgently Become a Workaholic (Adelaja 2017).

In ‘Corresponding with the city: Self-help Literature in West Africa’ Stephanie Newell identifies a central paradox in West African self-help pamphlets: the self that the texts produce is pushed toward a bright future by his or her own ambitions, helped by the author’s guidance, but the outcome of this journey is at the same time ‘determined by the invisible hand of fate’ (Newell 20). ‘Often taking the name of God’, Newell writes, ‘the hand of fate extends into the most intimate areas of readers’ personal lives in West African texts, appearing to withdraw the very possibilities represented by ‘self-help’ literature as a genre.’ Newell is quick to point out that while self-help authors rationalize the sense of futility and helplessness the reader might feel as an effect of his or her lack of insight into God’s plan for them, this sense of helplessness is also typically portrayed as a natural response to the precariousness of life in West African cities. The authors ‘seem to have recognized, on the spiritual level at least, the near impossibility of individual empowerment and autonomy in the face of West Africa’s extreme economic and political constraints’ (Newell 21). It may seem cynical that authors try to profit from offering their readers advice that it is unlikely to benefit them, but even though most readers will never have the chance to attain financial security and abundance or find their ‘ideal’ partner (Abiakam 2015), they may find pleasure and solace in reading this literature and imagining a brighter, more prosperous future for themselves. It is reasonable to assume then that at least some of the value of self-help pamphlets is psychological, that is their ability to help the reader imagine – if not attain – a different, more prosperous and happy life.¹

The way in which Peke Mechark structures the poems in his two volume collection Inspired to Liveliness (2017) creates a relationship between the poet and the reader that is similar to the mentor-protégé relationship that is common in Nigerian education, religious life and business. Like the authors of Onitsha market literature – the instructional but often sensational pamphlets that started circulating in Nigeria just before the county’s independence – poets like Mechark ‘interrupt the fluid, ambiguous world’ that is described to the reader ‘in order to interpret it and to make it mean something definite’ (Newell 110). His poems typically begin with a series of observations about an aspect of life after which the ‘you’ of the poem is encouraged to change his or her attitude and behavior. Mecherk’s ‘Everything will Pass’ begins with observations about how every good and bad moment will eventually end and that there is something to learn from both positive and negative experiences (ItL II, 26): ‘Perhaps! You knoweth not, / This will pass, that also will pass, / As time pass, everything pass [sic]’ (lines 1–3). The poem ends with a series of imperative sentences:

Let nothing take away your humanity, [let] nothing take away thy joy.

Let nothing [move] you away [from] thy vision, let nothing drain you of hope.

Let nothing [make] you sin against your conscience.

Because everything will pass, who knows where we are passing unto? (lines 50–53)

The fact that the concrete piece of life advice the reader is offered is to not give up on their dreams may be interpreted as signalling the poet’s recognition of the improbability that those dreams can come true. This interpretation might be buttressed by the fact that the poet uses a style reminiscent of the English of the King James Version of the Bible, which supports Newell’s claim that by introducing faith into the content (or, here, the style) of the poem, it draws attention to the very futility of the genre in this context. The average user of the OkadaBooks app is sure to be well aware of the improbability of miraculous uplift and it is therefore more likely that the encouragement and motivation that Mechark’s poem offers the reader is the instrumental value of the poem: that is to say, motivation is an end in itself. Akinyemi, who describes himself as ‘a personal development and career coach’ who mentors ‘hundreds of young people’ (‘I am Tolu Akinyemi’) explains in the preface to Dead Dogs Don’t Bark that he has composed his poems ‘in the hope that they will inspire you, yes YOU, that person reading this book – to put your gifts to use’ (15). He warns against the danger of negative thoughts and encourages the reader to try to become the best self he or she can be. In ‘Excellence’ the addressee of the poem is told to ‘cuddle up to excellence’ in order to make his or her ‘career goals come to fruition’ (line 17):

Else mediocrity can catch up with you like a heatwave

Released in full force like a loaf oven baked

The days of long service awards are over

If your dream is to buy a Range Rover

Then you have to embrace excellence. (lines 2–6)

Akinyemi celebrates the protestant work ethic and the idea of the self-made-man. While his claims that discipline and hard work are the only paths to success are hardly novel or particularly helpful, Akinyemi deploys rhetorical devices and poetic form to attempt to instill in the reader the motivation necessary to struggle on. What I call the poetics of uplift may be seen as a set of tropes, themes and modes of address that are used to let the reader imagine a better future or an alternative present, in this case a future in which the reader may become the owner of a Range Rover. The poetics is arguably more fine-tuned than the prose in typical self-help pamphlets and is more focused on the aesthetic pleasure of positive thinking and imagination. This language of uplift, I argue, becomes its own end in a text like Akinyemi’s and constitutes the value of the book for the readers.

The Imperative Mode and Linguistic Transparency

The imperative mode is a commonly used in inspirational poetry. As has been shown above, poets urge their readers to ‘banish the voices who say you can’t’, to ‘embrace excellence’ and to not ‘sin’ against their conscience. Poets use the directness of this verb form to convey a motivational tone. For example, in her e-book Streams of Inspiration Iddy Oga-Palmer encourages her readers to ‘seek wisdom’ (15), to be mindful of the beauty which is ‘everywhere to be found’ if one chooses to see it (16, lines 1) and to ‘make your living count for something / Find yourself / Exert yourself!’ (4, lines 20–22). It is arguably closer at hand to assume that the value the average reader sees in Oga-Palmer’s text-as-commodity is the potentially uplifting effect of its poetic language rather than the content of these imperative constructions. Put differently, it is safe to assume that most readers have heard versions of these calls to stop and smell the roses and to ‘find oneself’ before reading Oga-Palmer’s poetry, and that it is the uplifting effect of the poetic language (the ‘poeticness’ of the text) that makes the collection worth the five hundred Nigerian Naira that Oga-Palmer sells it for (approximately US$ 1.40). The use of such imperative constructions can in other words be understood as one way in which the text-as-commodity foregrounds its own value to the reader.

Rather than practical advice on how to secure for oneself a prosperous and happy future, writers of inspirational poetry typically present behaviours and attitudes that help or hinder in the pursuit of happiness. Oga-Palmer occasionally formulates pieces of advice on how to live and behave in social life, but more often offers her readers motivational adages in the imperative form:

Through high tides and turbulent waters

Let beckoning lights illuminate your path to shore! (7, lines 1–2)

Like elsewhere in her collection, in this untitled poem Oga-Parker uses universal metaphors and similes to refer to hardships and their solutions rather than particular problems that life in urban Nigeria may present. She motivates her readers in this generic poetic language: ‘And still on, I say, press!’ (line 7) What we see here is the fact that while Oga-Palmer shares with authors of self-help and religious pamphlets the ambition to help her readers better their lives, her writing shows a different kind of investment in literary form. Her overt use of poetic devices, such as repetition and variation, rhythmic control through line structure, and extended metaphors, takes precedence over precise and historical content. Even the more universal content of the poem, in the form of ideological and moral values, seem secondary to the imagery and formal aspects of the poetry.

The instrumentality then of poetic language is indicative of an assumption that poetic language operates transparently, an assumption that inspirational poetry rests on and that is overtly impressed on the reader. For the text commodity to attain value the reader is required to subscribe, on some level, to the belief that poetry can improve one’s chances of achieving one’s goals in life. Though it would require more textual space than is available here to explore it in detail, it may be supposed that this belief in the transparency and power of poetic language can be traced to other poetic and literary forms and contexts in Nigeria. One example of how this belief manifests itself is the fact that readers of religious pamphlets argued in interviews that Stephanie Newell made in Nigeria and Ghana that the text is or can be the ‘Word of God’ channelled through the pen of a writer (Newell 2005, 2007). The ability of Yorùbá oral poetry to form audiences and therefore also social collectives that Karin Barber has described is an example of the way in which secular poetry’s actual power to shape and transform has played and still plays a role in Nigerian communities (1997).

It is not uncommon that the authors of inspirational poetry overtly style themselves as believers in the power of poetry and see their poetry as serving the common good. In ‘For Them Who Soar On High’ Ikenna Chinedu Okeh writes about the poet’s responsibilities to the world. Like the authors of self-help pamphlets that Newell discusses, Okeh portrays the world as infused with a cosmic order and balance, created by Providence (line 3). The ‘artist’, in turn, has been created in order to fulfill ‘his solemn duty’ to ‘check and serve the order of balances / and lead the human race’ (7, 12–13). In another poem, ‘A word in Truth’, Okeh focuses more closely on the power of language to create change. ‘A word said in truth’, the poem argues, ‘finds good soil to grown in so that it will eventually bear fruit for all to enjoy’ (line 1).

This solemn faith in the power of language and poetry is constitutive of the perceived value and motivational power of this poetry. This forthright and sincere attitude to the written word must be shared by readers if they are to make good on the poets’ advice. That is, the author offers the reader a potentially life changing script, but it is the reader who must activate this transformation by applying the message of the poem effectively to his or her own life.

This sincere approach to language and poetry as possessing potentially transformative power is often enunciated in the first few pages of poetry collections and pamphlets. For example, in his poem simply titled ‘Language’, Ugo Aniga portrays language itself as the ‘tool’ through which divine power works (line 33). Aniga writes that ‘everything translates to language’, equates it with life and death and describes it as a ‘power’ that may be misused and cause suffering, but which ultimately serves God’s plan for the world (lines 2–3, 8, 16). Akenyemi also portrays language as a potentially destructive but powerful tool that can be used to ‘enthrone’ kings, as well as cause kingdoms to be ‘pulled down’ (lines 3–4).

Similarly, Eke’s Looking for Myself and My Phone Charger begins with the poem ‘Words: They are Everything’.² ‘Words are very soothing; they can bring succor in times of distress’ the reader is told: ‘Words are motivational; they can build us up and make us do our best’ (lines 5 and 7). However, while words are ‘uplifting; they are salve to our weary hearts’ they can also be ‘mean-spirited; they can hurt us so deeply and mercilessly’ (lines 16 and 9). The poem does not set itself up as the words of someone who speaks from experience. Rather, it relies on a view of its own poetics and language as being de facto capable of generating truth and change in people’s lives. Eke’s poem, in other words, promises that the poems that follow it can potentially motivate and pacify the reader and lift him or her up from the ‘woes’ and ‘heartbreaks’ that make life difficult. From the transparent contract imposed on a reader by the imperative form, to the universal imagery that conveys a sincere belief in the ability of poetry to transform lives, these poems give poetic language itself instrumental value.

Addressivity, Substitution and Uplift

As in traditional Yorùbá poetry, many writers of inspirational poetry ‘employ strategies of audience address’ for ‘poetic effects’ (Nnodim 165). In The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics (2007) Karin Barber discusses the way in which addressivity defines genre and creates audiences. She uses the Bakhtinian view of addressivity as ‘the quality of turning to someone’ and argues that ‘the formation of genres occurs in the zone of addressivity constituted by the mutual orientation of the text to the audience and the audience to the text’ (138). In a collection of inspirational poetry like self-help writer and poet Affiong Ene-Obong’s A Life Called Forever: A Collection of Inspirational Poetry (2014), this ‘turning to’ is one way in which the text signals its instrumentality – it is how the text (commodity) lifts up and inspires.

Ene-Obong deploys a small range of rhetorical techniques that serve to transfer the focus of the text away from the voice and speaking subject and toward the reader. She interweaves evangelical Christian rhetoric and uplifting adages in her poetry and like evangelical preachers and motivational speakers she often addresses the reader directly and in the imperative mode discussed above. We see this in her poem ‘Live While You Can’:

Reach for the stars,

Aim for the golden crown,

Seek to save the lost,

In him they would be found.

Live while you can;

Settle for the best, (lines 18–23)

It may be argued, as Hugh Hochman does, that poetry ‘has the serious commission of implicating, in some meaningful and complex fashion, those who listen’, and that this is especially true in cases where poems address a ‘you’ (176). The second-person addressivity of Ene-Obong’s poem is more than a device that creates a specific relation between text and addressee. It is also a device that symbolically attempts to realize the instrumental value that is foregrounded in the text commodity: that is, poetry’s supposed ability to inspire.

In poems where Ene-Obong places first-person speaker at the centre of the text, this speaker is typically not ascribed specific characteristics or identifying markers. Rather, the speaker is often a placeholder rather than a central subject with a distinct voice. This generic ‘I’ can be identified with broadly precisely because she/he speaks from a generic, everyman, position. Furthermore, this subject is the receiver of good fortune, divine love, and uplift – a veritable receptacle for the readers’ hopes and expectations. In the prayer-like poem ‘I am able’, the ‘I’ stands in for any subject who repeats the words of the poem.

I’m gonna stand out,

Tell the world what it’s all about.

I’m able.

I know all things are possible,

God’s word is plausible,

His miracles are incredible. (Lines 15–20)

Like codified prayers, Ene-Obong’s poem collapses ‘all meaningful distinction’ between one ‘I’ and all other individuals who utter the words (Targoff 476). Writing about a different literary genre, Karin Barber describes this ‘substitution’ of one for the other as a specific form of poetic equivalence. She points out that it is used in contexts where the identity of the person is less important than the ‘inhabitable slot’ itself – in this case the ‘I’ who is devoid of identity and yet, paradoxically, so unique that he or she will ‘stand out’ among others (2007 110–111). The reader may see the ‘I’ of the poem as a literary construct whilst simultaneously understanding the pronoun as referring also to him- or herself. The two interpretations of the literary subject are not mutually exclusive, precisely because of this substitutability. This substitutability is not just a stylistic feature of the text as a literary work but also a property in the text-as-commodity. Inviting the reader to understand the line ‘I know all things are possible’ as something that can become true also for the reader is another way in which the texts attempts to fulfill the promise of uplift and be of value to a reader who is looking to be motivated and inspired.

The ‘I’ in Ivie M. Eke’s poem ‘I am not Afraid’ is like that in Ene-Obong’s ‘I’m Able’ – a placeholder and ‘slot’ that the reader can inhabit. This ‘I’ has the power to change his or her outlook by thinking positive thoughts, like:

I am not afraid of heartbreaks or any kind of setback,

For I know that my heart will heal and I will get back

on track.

I am not afraid of career woes or a murky future,

For it is from these challenges I gain strength and

feel secure. (lines 4–6, 12–14)

The fact that the first stanza refers to ‘heartbreaks’ in the plural form contributes to the sense that the ‘I’ has the function of a generic placeholder rather than a pronoun that refers to a specific speaking subject. Though it is possible to interpret the line as referring to a (supposedly female) subject who is not afraid to go through a series of heartbreaks, and though it is possible to read the word ‘heartbreaks’ as referring to other experiences than the unhappy ending of a romantic relationship, it opens up for a reading in which the word ‘heartbreaks’ is interpreted as referring to any emotional hardship experienced by any reader. Likewise, the way the second quoted stanza is structured can be read as encouraging the reader to adopt a positive mindset that will help him or her through various challenges, rather than an observation made by the speaking subject about what effects past experiences have tended to have on his or her life specifically. The last stanza makes the interpretation of the ‘I’ as a placeholder inevitable since it declares the speaker's deep faith in God, which is a religious imperative. Even if these lines are read as words uttered by a speaking subject about their own life and their faith in God, it is at the same time an imperative directed at the reader and thus places the reader and the speaking subject in the same relation to God. The poetic effect is reminiscent of the prayer form, in which an entire congregation recites the personal pronoun ‘I’ from his or her own subjectivity. This reading of Eke’s poem rests on a certain view of the transformational power of language, however, and makes little sense without it. The effect of the poem relies on the extent to which it makes the reader see it as projecting a possible future. The reader is, in other words, called upon to participate in the creation of meaning by reading the text as relevant to his or her own life and as containing a certain kind of truth.

Commodification and Value

The poetic devices and tropes referred to collectively in this article as a poetics of uplift are involved in the creation of the currency that texts have in the commercial space of OkadaBooks. As has been argued throughout this text, the poetics of the text as a literary work can also be seen as a property in the text-as-commodity. In Literature and the Creative Economy, Sarah Brouillette points out that the commodification of a work of literature is distinct form the standard process by which things become commodities, because ‘rather than disguise the labor that goes into the production of the object, commodity fetishism in the literary field obfuscates the realities of the making of the product’ (50). Alienation, as it is understood within Marxist theory, separates the object from the labour used to produce it and thereby prepares it for its existence as a commodity on a market. However, according to Brouillette, the literary commodity attains value through the meaning attached to authors’ names ‘and to the ideologies of authorship that make literary expression interesting to audiences’ (50). The commercial success of a novel on the global literary market thus requires that ‘there is little separation between the thing for sale and the body behind it.’ In cases where a work ‘derives value, and achieves success because of the ostensible singularity of the expression it contains’, which is in turn attached to the ‘emotional and intellectual life’ of the author, this process presupposes a set of connections between author and work, and work and consumer/reader that are primarily extratextual (50). While this is certainly true for works by well-known (particularly prize-winning) authors and books published by renowned publishing houses, it is less applicable to most of the texts available to the OkadaBooks user.

The collections of poetry discussed here are the result of a commodification process that differs in important ways from the process that Brouillette describes. In contrast to the works that Brouillette has in mind, these texts exist at the periphery of the global literary market and their authors publish their texts at OkadaBooks precisely because their names do not carry enough currency to get them contracts with traditional publishers. Though the author biographies of the poets are typically hyperbolic and obviously meant to convey their authority, the fact that they tend to contain the same components (information about the poet’s academic degrees, their business careers and their ambitions for their writing) makes them inadvertently downplay rather than emphasize the individual author’s uniqueness among other writers of motivational poetry.

Their commodification is also not primarily predicated on the creation of value through the ‘singularity’ of the author’s writing. Though poets of course have their own personal modes of expression, they deploy similar devices and modes of address to achieve the same effects and these effects are what the reader supposedly expects when buying and/or downloading the work. The recognizability and accessibility are often advertized in the blurb or even title of collections on OkadaBooks, such as in Ogaga Eruteya’s book Cistern of Treasures: A collection of reflective and instructive poems everyone can relate with (2017). In the preface to Emotions & Realities Rosemary Okolo explains that her poems are written ‘in simple everyday English language, comprehensible to children, youth and adults’ and that they are ‘therefore suitable for all’ (9). Though authors also emphasize the singularity of their own writing, value is in other words created by foregrounding the recognizability of the text for users who are familiar with inspirational poetry and the everydayness of the language for users who are not frequent readers of poetry.³ These texts in other words do not accrue value by the merging of the commodity and author or even the singularity of the individual author’s style, but by the merging of the text commodity and the poetics of uplift that is applied in all of the collections that have been discussed in this article.

Conclusion

In ‘My Phone and I’, which is not Ivie M. Eke’s only poem on this theme, the speaker admits to be worryingly attached to her smartphone. When the network goes down, which it regularly does in Nigeria, the speaker feels anxious because she knows that she might be missing stories ‘On sites like Buzzfeed and the Sunday Mirror’ (line 19). However, the mood changes in the last stanza:

I am laughing now, as I’ve just realized,

That I am using my phone to write this story,

So I might as well get used to the fact,

That my phone is a companion; a life-long necessity. (lines 21–24)

Okeh’s readers are of course likely read this poem on their own smartphones and may share this annoyance with the interruptions of the flow of text and the speaker’s enthusiasm for the worlds of meaning that the technology opens up when it does work. Okeh’s poem is similarly transparent to the poems discussed above that celebrate the transformative power of poetic language: the anxiety and the relief that the speaker feels is meant to be understood by a reader equally reliant on the digital textual landscape.

As a part of this digital landscape, OkadaBooks presents itself as a technological solution to some of the problems faced by Nigerian readers, as well as by less established authors and other stakeholders. It provides a digital space where forms of writing shape audiences and audiences shape the writing, which Barber and others after her have described as a key element in West African popular culture (1997, 353–354). As I hope to have demonstrated in this article, online spaces like OkadaBooks allow us to discuss the role of the text-as-commodity in this process of emergence, for the users of the app not only participate in creating new forms of text and their audiences, but also in producing texts-as-commodities and the new values and instrumentalities this creates. They are the producers and consumers of texts that foreground their usefulness and relevance through their modes of addressivity, their use of imperative constructions and their celebration of the transparency and transformative power of poetic language.

While OkadaBooks creates space for new producers and audiences, this progressive environment also encompasses an undertone of nostalgia for residual forms. Despite its celebration of new technology, the companionship that the speaker of Eke’s ‘My Phone and I’ feels with her cellphone is evocative of the trope of the book as companion that is prevalent in European literature from well before the Romantic era (Ferris 114–115). Mechark models his style on archaic Biblical language to convey the weight and seriousness associated with the Good Book, and many inspirational poets make use of poetic forms that are clearly pre-modernist. It is therefore possible to see recognizability as a key element in OkadaBooks texts. Barber emphasizes the ‘quotedness’ of a text’s content – ‘the fact that what is being uttered has been uttered before’ (2007, 77). This also takes place ‘between genres’ when one genre incorporates elements of other genres that remain recognizable. This, in conclusion, is a feature of the poetics of uplift and in much of the content of OkadaBooks in general that is generative of meaning and that allows us to connect new forms with a rich and layered literary history, as well as being yet another way in which the individual text signals its value to and for the reader.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 2016-01144].

Notes

1 In ‘Being “UnAfrican”: Notes on a Nairobi Street Pamphlet’, Elsie Cloete writes about a street pamphlet written to be enjoyed for a very different reason than the self-help pamphlets discussed here. The pamphlet Cloete discusses is titled The Truth and contains what is presented as a journalistic article about a father whose wife and four daughters have become lesbians and who drug him and hold him hostage in his own house. She describes seeing a cluster of people in the street eagerly reading the pamphlet and laughing together while waiting for taxis and buses. Cloete describes the pamphlet, which deals with a subject that is generally considered taboo in Kenya, as ‘sensationalist’ and ‘clearly designed to catch the attention of the general public’ (69).

2 The OkadaBooks version of Eke’s collection is incomplete and contains only a section of the poem ‘Words’ but has the same table of contents as the Kindle version of the same collection. The latter version contains the poems listed in the table of contents. The references therefore refer to the kindle edition.

3 In ‘Preliminary Notes on Audiences in Africa’ (1997) Karin Barber discusses a form of substitutability and recognizability that is relevant here – the ‘stereotypes, clichés and formulas’ prevalent in West African literature, which make ‘narrative available for practical application to the reader’s own experience’ (357). Barber, following Newell, argues that it is the repeated patterns and recognizability of the form as well as content of the text that makes it possible for the text to move beyond ‘the mesh of specificity’ and present its truths and messages as applicable in its reader’s lives.