Lind Grant-Oyeye has never been a refugee, but she has lived on three different continents and both sides of North America in recent years. She comes from a region of the world - Nigeria, in northwest Africa - where human suffering is well understood. She is also highly educated in the human condition, as a psychiatrist now working for Northern Health in Prince George, specializing in children. She is also a parent of school-aged children.
All these factors and more were at play as she watched the news reports during the past few years of people forced to flee for their lives from their homes, communities, countries, in the Middle East. Many fled the destruction and torture of extremists proclaiming an Islamic state. They flooded into Europe, Africa, adjacent Asia and relatively safer Middle Eastern countries.
Also, she was aware, another refugee crisis was happening in similar, dangerous, watery escape routes of Southeast Asia.
It all triggered the literary mind of Grant-Oyeye. She composed a poem, as she has done at other times for other purposes, and it found its way into the Universal Human Rights Student Network poetry contest and the top of the judges' list. It won, out of more than 700 other poems submitted from 93 countries to the Austria-based organization. Her prize was 300 Euros and international publicity.
"The poems we received, are a moving compilation of personal stories and an emphatic reminder that human rights belong to everyone, everywhere," said a UHRSN statement. "Emerging from one of the worst years for refugees that the world has ever seen, the submitted poems are documents of historic relevance. Every line of more than 100,000 words we have received is an urgent and implicit call to action."
Grant-Oyeye's poem is entitled M-moments.
She also received recognition for her art this past year when her poem Remembrance was published in the BC Medical Journal. She said "it must have been something out of the ordinary for them, not technical medical data stuff." It used driving the highway as a symbol for the way memory races at times and slows to a crawl at times, in the minds of dementia sufferers.
"I look at world issues," she said. "I write sometimes about political topics. I was impressed to learn (about the UHRSN contest) that people were interested in using poets to engage politicians and the public. Poems are very effective tools to discuss issues like poverty and what people are going through and what the environment is going through. Life has so many problems to settle with dialogue. That's what a poem is. I'm still working on writing a love poem. Someday. Someday."
She has been writing poetry and part of the theatre arts since her university years, getting her undergraduate degree from the University of Benin. She then pursued her medical degree in Ireland, moved next to New Brunswick to begin her career as a doctor, and then chose Prince George to set up a permanent practice.
She was influenced by many writers, from Nigeria and internationally, as inspirations. One in particular, Joy Isi
Bewaji, stood out to Grant-Oyeye for marrying skilled writing with social commentary and being unafraid in the process of using raw language, biting discourse, even open swearing, to make a more civil point.
"She was criticized for this but she said no, I cannot pretend. I cannot write in a clean, polished way until people start treating women in a clean, polished way, and governments start treating the public in a polished way."
Grant-Oyeye self-published a chapbook of Christmas-inspired poems last year, and is now putting the finishing touches on what will be her first full-length volume of poetry.
M-Moments by Lind Grant-Oyeye
Silvery hair, bones thinned in-out, of life the silver screen speaks.
Letter M, embossed in audacious colors. It had begun long before her time....
time when clay pots were sanded out to shimmer.
It starts by falling- falling in love. Minute carts tenderly packed
full of moments, full of memories delicately loosely tied together.
It flows with fantasies of prized certificates, a desire for a stamp-the majestic seal of approval.
It flows to the stage of self- journey through dark subways, tunnels to the unfamiliar...
untested promise lands. She heard some had swam bellied-up in wavy pools,
Chillin' to the historic tempest.
Others swim to "bien venue" cat-calls, to honeymoons filled with French kisses,
flowers and fresh caresses, beauty and beautiful feet planted on cozy carpets,
romance lasting into wintery and the hurricane hugging days.
On strange lands were some feet planted. They kissed strangers
and slept with enemies -red juices pressed against their lips,
with the firm force of a heavy weight boxer's strength, kissing Judas' doppelgnger
to the sweet sound of the language from Babel, spoken with a lover's passion.
Faint memories show M in the alphabet song, is for Migration, for marriage.
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