When Ordinary Things Become Sources Of Wisdom: Òtúrúpọ̀n Méjì & The Philosophy Of Poetry

By MAJEKODUNMI OSERIEMEN EBHOHON

Where Does Poetic Knowledge Begin?

POETRY often begins with something familiar. A mouth becomes a blade, a fading flower evokes lost youth, and a broken mirror suggests a fractured identity. Through metaphor, simile and symbolism, poets transform everyday objects into instruments for expressing complex emotions and ideas. Yet I believe that poetry can do more than use ordinary things to communicate meanings we already understand. It can also investigate those things, follow their histories and transformations, and discover meanings that were not apparent at the beginning.

This question lies at the centre of my presentation, Òtúrúpọ̀n Méjì and the Poetry of the Ordinary. I am interested in what happens when a poet begins with an actual object, examines its material existence and allows the questions arising from that examination to shape the poem. Rather than imposing a predetermined message on the object, the poet investigates it until its circumstances begin to disclose something about human experience.

To develop this argument, I turn to Òtúrúpọ̀n Méjì, one of the 16 principal Odù Ifá within the Yoruba system of divination, knowledge and oral literature. I approach this tradition not merely as a cultural reference or a source of illustrative folklore, but as a philosophical resource for thinking about how knowledge becomes available to human beings.

The central question is deceptively simple: what if wisdom is not confined to books, institutions or extraordinary experiences? What if it is also dispersed throughout the ordinary world, waiting for someone to pay sufficient attention?

Òtúrúpọ̀n Méjì & the Dispersal of Wisdom

A story associated with Òtúrúpọ̀n Méjì provides a useful starting point. In the account I draw upon, Tortoise gathers all the wisdom in the world into a calabash because he wants to possess it exclusively. He then attempts to hide the vessel at the top of an Iroko tree. However, the calabash, which he holds against his chest, obstructs his climb.

Snail subsequently shows Tortoise a way to climb that he has failed to discover. Tortoise becomes frustrated when he realises that another creature possesses knowledge he does not. A struggle follows as he attempts to reclaim the calabash, carrying the conflict across land, water, air and different terrains.

Eventually, the calabash breaks, scattering its contents across the earth, into the soil, through the waters and into the air. Wisdom no longer remains enclosed in one vessel or under the control of one individual. Instead, it becomes dispersed throughout the world, available to anyone willing and able to encounter it.

I read this dispersal as a way of understanding knowledge as distributed rather than monopolised. The story does not explicitly prescribe a method of writing poetry. Nevertheless, its image of wisdom escaping containment offers a philosophical basis for my argument that the ordinary world can become a source of inquiry.

From this perspective, the poet does not need to search exclusively for extraordinary subjects. A mug, a ceiling fan, a sheet of paper, an alarm clock or a mound of eba may provide the beginning of a serious investigation into love, labour, mortality, inequality and our relationship with time.

The important question is not simply what an object symbolises. It is what we might discover by examining what the object is, how it functions, what has happened to it and how it participates in the lives of people.

This approach also challenges narrow assumptions about who can participate in poetry. Everyone encounters objects, experiences change, maintains relationships and confronts loss. Such experiences do not automatically produce accomplished poems; writing still demands craft, attention and revision. However, they provide potential starting points for poetic discovery that do not belong exclusively to professionally trained writers.

Consider the ordinary experience of cutting one’s hair. Hair grows, a barber cuts it, and it grows again. Repeated across a lifetime, this routine offers an opportunity to examine bodily change, ageing, repetition and the passage of time. Nothing extraordinary needs to happen. The possibility of discovery already exists within the familiar experience.

From Objects as Metaphors to Objects as Sources of Knowledge

I do not propose abandoning metaphor, simile or symbolism. These remain essential resources for poetry. My concern is the role an object plays in the development of a poem and whether the poet allows it to contribute to the discovery of knowledge.

When a poet describes a cruel mouth as sharp as a blade, the blade helps the reader understand the mouth. Similarly, a broken mirror can represent a fractured identity. In both cases, the poet begins with an idea and employs an object to express it.

But what happens when the poet resists the temptation to assign meaning immediately?

Imagine a broken mug. A poet could quickly declare it a symbol of a damaged relationship. However, the mug might offer more if the poet examines its history, the circumstances in which it broke, the owner’s reluctance to discard it and the reasons it remains in use despite the availability of replacements.

Such details could lead to questions about attachment, memory, economic circumstances, affection or the difficulty of abandoning a painful past. The mug might eventually acquire symbolic significance, but that significance would emerge through the investigation rather than precede it.

This distinction matters because a poem can begin with a profound idea without discovering anything beyond it. If every detail merely confirms the poet’s original conclusion, the work risks becoming an illustration of an argument already completed elsewhere.

Conversely, when sustained observation complicates the poet’s assumptions, the poem creates room for surprise. The object becomes an active participant in the development of understanding, rather than a convenient instrument for delivering a message.

I call this approach poetic inquiry through ordinary objects: the practice of examining an object’s material existence, history, use and transformation to investigate questions about human experience.

Daffodils, Displacement & the Political Life of Flowers

The distinction becomes clearer when I compare William Wordsworth’s celebrated poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, commonly known as Daffodils, with my own poem on the same subject.

In Wordsworth’s poem, the daffodils awaken pleasure through their beauty, while the remembered image of the flowers renews that pleasure later. Nature becomes a source of emotional restoration, and memory extends the experience beyond the original encounter.

My poem approaches the flowers differently. Rather than beginning with their beauty or the speaker’s emotional response, I follow their cultivation, seasonal changes, reproduction and transplantation. Gradually, their history reveals a connection to a displaced community.

‘Daffodils’

The daffodils were planted in rows.
Each bulb received its small plot of earth,
each stem its measured share of light.
Come spring, the yellow heads opened
at the same height, facing the same sun.

The gardener cut the dead flowers
but left the leaves to feed the bulbs.
For weeks, the garden looked neglected.
Visitors asked, “why leave it untidied?”.
He said the work was not finished.

By summer, the leaves had yellowed.
He pulled them loose and cleared the beds.
Beneath the soil, the old bulbs had spent
their strength making smaller bulbs.
He separated the crowded ones,
kept the sound, discarded the rotten.

In autumn, he dug new holes
and planted the smaller bulbs in rows.
He worked until the garden was full again,
then washed the soil from his hands.

The following spring, the daffodils returned.
Some were taller. Some flowered early.
A few did not flower at all.
The gardener marked their positions
and waited for the next season.

When the council came to inspect the garden,
they praised the flowers for surviving
three years after the village was cleared.

The gardener showed them the plan:
every row matched a street;
every bulb had been lifted
from a demolished house’s front garden.

The council asked what should be done
with the flowers.

He pointed to the yellow heads
bending in the wind.

“They’re ready,” he said.
“Dig them up. The houses are coming back.”

The political meaning of these flowers emerges from their material history. Their rows correspond to streets, their bulbs survive the destruction of homes, and their return becomes connected to the possibility of rebuilding a community. The flowers are not simply symbols of displacement imposed on an otherwise unrelated scene. Their cultivation and transplantation establish the circumstances through which the poem discovers displacement as its central concern.

This approach does not make Wordsworth’s poem less valuable. Rather, the comparison reveals two different ways an object can contribute to poetic understanding: it can awaken and sustain an emotional response, or its material history can become the basis for investigating a wider social reality.

The distinction also shows why ordinary objects can support political poetry without requiring the poet to begin with an explicit political argument. A flower can lead towards questions about property, forced displacement, memory, public authority and the relationship between communities and their physical environments.

The Broken Mug & the Persistence of Attachment

My poem The Return Policy begins with a transaction that appears straightforward. A trader promises that a red mug can be returned if it cracks before sunset. The speaker spends the afternoon testing it, yet the mug remains intact. Years later, the speaker continues to choose it even after its handle breaks and its glaze deteriorates.

‘The Return Policy’

I bought a red mug from the market.
The trader said
if it cracked before sunset,
I could bring it back.

So I carried it home,
set it beside the sink,
and spent the afternoon
dropping spoons into the red mug,
tapping the rim with a fork,
holding it beneath the tap,
waiting for a fault.

At dusk,
the red mug was still there.
The receipt was still there.
The road to the market
was still there.

I tore the receipt in half.

Years later,
the red mug sits in the cupboard.

The handle broken.
The glaze left.
A chip fell from the lip,
showing the grey dirt underneath.

Each morning,
I reach past six newer mugs
to find the old red.

The poem’s central question develops through the contrast between deterioration and continued preference. Why does the speaker keep reaching for a damaged mug when six newer alternatives are available?

I deliberately leave that question unanswered. Perhaps the mug has accumulated memories; perhaps familiarity has made it irreplaceable; perhaps its imperfections have become part of its appeal. The poem does not settle the matter. Instead, the mug’s condition and the speaker’s repeated action create a space in which readers can consider the complexity of attachment.

Here, the object’s physical life does more than decorate an idea about love or memory. Its broken handle, missing glaze and chipped rim establish the conditions through which the question emerges. The poem gains its force by attending to the particular object rather than treating every mug as interchangeable.

Paper, Environmental Contradiction & the Double Funeral

My poem Double Funeral turns to paper to examine the relationship between environmental concern and material consumption. The speaker sits at an oak desk, holds a sheet of paper and reflects on the transformations that connect the writing surface to the forest from which it came.

‘Double Funeral’

I am sitting
at a desk
made of oak,
holding a white sheet
of what used to be
a different, taller
version of the forest.

We were not satisfied
with the first death—
the sudden bite
of the steel,
the heavy shudder
of the trunk
hitting the forest floor.

We required
a second, slower exit.

So we took
the timber to the vats,
washing away
the green spirit
with a caustic bath,
until the wood forgot
the bird’s nest
and the rough texture
of the rain.

Now it lies here,
flat and pale,
staring back
with a chemical face
now taught
to hold ink
instead of sap.

I pick up a pen
to save the world,
drawing a line
across this white corpse
to speak
for trees,

the only thing
in the room
that has died twice
to bear
all I ache
to pour.

The contradiction lies in the speaker’s attempt to defend nature through a material product made from its destruction. The tree is felled and processed before becoming paper; subsequently, the speaker uses that paper to advocate for the very natural world from which it came.

By following the transformation from tree to writing surface, the poem raises questions about intention, consequence and environmental responsibility. Can we defend nature without examining the material systems that sustain our own activities? What contradictions remain hidden when the tools of advocacy depend on the resources being defended?

These questions emerge from the paper’s physical history. The environmental argument is therefore not merely attached to an abstract symbol. It develops through the material processes that make the speaker’s act of writing possible.

The poem also invites a broader reading of consumption. Everyday objects often conceal the extraction, labour and industrial processes that produced them. Examining those histories can reveal connections between personal habits and wider economic or environmental systems.

Eba, Ageing & the Passage of Time

My final example, Eba, begins with a familiar Nigerian food. The poem follows the food from freshness through cooling, hardening and eventual decay. As the texture changes, the speaker recognises parallels with ageing and mortality.

‘Eba’

I am looking at a fresh mound of eba
in a plastic bowl,
steaming and smooth,
having just endured the violent slapping
of a wooden spoon
and the scalding water of its birth.

Right now, it is in its twenties—supple, radiant,
and full of yellow optimism.
But if you leave it on the counter long enough,
the midday sun moves across the linoleum,
and a subtle tightening begins.

The skin grows leathery,
the way a face does
after forty years of afternoons.

It begins to shrink slightly
from the edges of its world,
withdrawing into a quieter,
more solid version of itself.

By evening, the steam is gone.
The stiffness sets into the joints of the contour,
and a fine network of cracks map the surface,
like the lines around my own eyes
when I look too closely into the bathroom mirror.

And then, the forced retirement.

A pale fuzz appears on the crest
followed by the slow,
sour bruising of the core.

The yellow giving way to gray,
softening, sinking into its footprint,
until it is no longer a meal,
but a brief history of what it means to grow cold.

The poem’s reflection on mortality develops through observable changes in the food. Its surface hardens, cracks appear, and mould eventually replaces freshness. The speaker connects these changes to the human body, particularly the lines around the eyes that reveal the passage of time.

That connection is effective because the food remains materially present throughout the poem. Its changing condition gives the speaker a concrete basis for contemplating ageing without beginning with an abstract declaration about death.

Moreover, the familiar food situates the inquiry within everyday Nigerian experience. The poem demonstrates that philosophical reflection need not depend on distant landscapes or extraordinary events. A meal cooling on a counter can become an occasion for examining the body, time and the limits of life.

LOOK: A Practical Method for Poetic Inquiry

To make this approach accessible to other writers, I organise the process under the acronym LOOK. The framework is not a formula for producing identical poems. Rather, it offers a sequence of questions that can help poets move from casual observation towards sustained inquiry.

L — Locate the object. Begin with something specific: a cup, a key, a receipt, a pair of shoes or a light switch. Place it in an actual situation, and resist the temptation to decide immediately what it represents.

O — Observe its material life. Examine its composition, function, condition, use and history. What happens to it over time? What does it enable, prevent, conceal or endure? These questions encourage attention to the object’s particular characteristics.

O — Open the questions. Ask what its circumstances might reveal. A locked box, for instance, may invite questions about protection and confinement. A light switch may lead towards questions about power and control. The aim is to let the object’s properties generate questions rather than impose a message on it.

K — Keep looking. Resist the first interpretation and continue examining the details. Allow the object to complicate the original idea. Through this process, the poem may discover something the writer had not fully understood before beginning.

The method does not eliminate symbolism or imagination. Instead, it gives them concrete material from which to develop. An object may eventually carry metaphorical significance, but the poem earns that significance through its attention to the object’s actual circumstances.

Turning Observation into a Writing Practice

I would begin a workshop by asking participants to choose an ordinary object within reach. For three minutes, they should observe it without writing a poem or assigning it an abstract meaning. They should record five details about its material condition, function or history.

Next, I would ask them to consider three questions: What does the object make possible? What does it conceal or prevent? What has happened to it, or what might happen through continued use?

Only then should they begin drafting. The resulting poem might explore a relationship, a political arrangement, a memory or the experience of mortality. However, the writer should allow the details to lead towards the discovery rather than announce the conclusion before the inquiry begins.

Finally, revision becomes essential. If the object could be replaced by any other object without changing the poem, the writer may need to investigate its particular features more closely. The purpose is not to force every object to produce a grand philosophical lesson. It is to determine whether careful observation has opened a meaningful path towards understanding.

Wisdom Is Already Around Us

My engagement with Òtúrúpọ̀n Méjì has led me to reconsider where poetic knowledge begins. The story of wisdom dispersed throughout the world offers a philosophical lens through which I can approach the ordinary object as a source of inquiry rather than merely an instrument of expression.

The poems discussed here demonstrate the possibilities. Daffodils lead towards displacement and the recovery of community; a broken mug raises questions about attachment; paper exposes an environmental contradiction; and eba provides a material route into reflections on ageing and mortality.

These readings do not suggest that objects possess a single, fixed meaning. Instead, they show how attention to material circumstances can generate questions that develop through the poem. The writer must still make deliberate choices about language, structure, rhythm and omission. Observation provides the starting point, not a substitute for craft.

Ultimately, I return to the image of wisdom escaping the calabash. If knowledge is dispersed throughout the world, then the poet’s task is not always to search for something extraordinary. Sometimes, it is to look again at what is already present, investigate what it has experienced and discover what its existence can teach us.

I thank my brother Godson Osarenren and the entire Naija Poetry Fest community for the opportunity to share these reflections.