There’s certainly a rarity in the poetry that turns the ordinary, mundane into something exotic and priceless, poetry you’d want to read and reread for its sheer, infinite pleasure. This is the sort of poetic gift that Sandison Jumbo has gifted his readers in Dinner on Saturn’s Rings (Kraft Books Limited, 2024, Ibadan). At once joyfully playful, serious, and reverential, Jumbo seemingly demystifies certain opaque concepts and, like the engineer that he is, crafts endearing lines that touch the soul in a heartfelt manner.
In each of the five sections of the book – Life: Life and Journey; Belief, Faith and Ritual; Memories; Nature and the Physical World and Love and Laughter – Jumbo teases out the essence of life and living in stimulating lines that speak to the humanity us. The title of the work itself speaks of man’s infinite capacity to attain even the most seemingly unattainable. Indeed, who dines in orbit and in the planetary body called Saturn? But man’s capacity to dream big things into being persuades Jumbo to believe that it’s possible to dine in Saturn.
And in the opening poem ‘In Thrall’, Jumbo makes the seemingly impossible possible, as he writes, “I’ve scooped plasma from the sun/To cook meals and heat my bath,/Moved Mount Everest just for fun;/None can ever walk my exact path...
/I’ve had dinner in Saturn’s rings,/Kicked the moon like a soccer ball,/Plucked light rays like guitar strings-,“ and ends the poem with the punch lines, “I�.