Get to know Emminex, the Game of Thrones fan and Opera Mini user who writes poems inspired by fantasy books he finds in the  Worldreader app

Emminex is a very avid reader who reads for at least four hours every day on his mobile phone. He loves writing poetry and seeing animated films. He’s a huge Game of Thrones fan and he particularly loves fantasy books because they broaden his imagination. Here’s what he had to say about reading on his phone:

Emminex enjoys reading while commuting

“Reading books on my mobile phone has made it easier for me to access my choice of books anywhere, any time. And like the saying goes, readers are leaders. I am leading because I am reading.”

He recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Kogi State University. Here’s what he had to say when he graduated:

“I really do lack words to express myself right now. God is faithful! Even against overwhelming odds, he showed himself strong and mighty. Someone may not understand what I’m saying here. But I know what I’ve seen and been through. Mama, I made it!”

People across Africa have spent more than 4 million hours reading in 2018

On this International Literacy Day, Opera Mini and Worldreader are celebrating that people across Africa have read for more than 4 million hours so far this year. Emminex has contributed to this milestone and his story is one of more than 414,000 people reading every month across Africa.

Emminex writes poems about many things Some of his favorite themes are about love, his country of Nigeria and the self.

Here’s a selection of his poems that we love:

Love!

A feeling so inexplicable

An enigma

A mystery that eludes human mastery.

Once it besiege your mind,

Every sense of control tends to vanish

You get drowned in the sea of obsession

Obsession with nothing but concession

Concession so obvious

But you still fail to realize

Even when its apparent and staring at your real eyes.

Have you ever tasted love?

Just a nibble of it

Sends you soaring in the skies of ecstasy

A mere taste of its cup

Gets you flowing with the ebb and tide of intoxication

An intoxicating feat not achievable even by the strongest of drinks.

Just a thought of someone you are in love with,

Your brain chemistry changes

Pleasure hormones gets it deluged;

Oxytocin or probably dopamine

Sending pleasure impulses down your spine.

You begin to cherish each moment

Every opportunity with that person.

Sometimes you get sleepless nights too

Regurgitating those lovely moments you shared

Hours that seem no longer than seconds.

To you the person becomes flawless

Little wonder love is said to be blind

Blindness so invisible with deep ends

On whose pillars our feelings depends

Have you ever fallen from the heights of love?

Its a fall you will hope never ends!

 

Songs

behind my throat

lay nestled the lyrics of an unsung song,

a song too heavy for my tongue to

shoulder, for i shudder at the sound

of my own voice like a pair of jaws

clattering to the frosty percussions

of mother nature

you see, songs are dark rooms

where I hide my feelings, from the glaring

bloodshot eyes of stark reality

like a lost wind,

i whistle tunes of despair into the deep

depths of the ears of the mountains,

and find soothing melodies in the eyes

of grey clouds squirting warm tears

i don’t know why, but sometimes

i feel like a song, lost in the mouth

of an amateur singer

do you feel the same way too?

i thought of writing a sweet song

but my pen got quadriplegic as soon

as it kissed the whiteness of the paper;

the pen craves for a black paper,

they are good for writing sour songs

don’t ask me why this poem sounds

this way, i didn’t write any word

the ink just splashed on the pages

and these texts came staring at me

 

threnody…

the things my eyes have seen

are like broken bottles dissolved in the throat

of an infant, who has barely understood

the pleasures snuggled in colostrum;

 

they are flames, flourishing like flowers,

searing through the skin of men,

making barbecue of what was once called flesh.

 

i think of Plateau, how the human body

made mimicry of a sketchpad, with machetes

for pencils; sketching a gory artwork.

 

the dam that bar the pond behind my eyelids

are broken; the whites of my eyes

have taken to the colour of my blood’s essence.

 

i scribble these lines, not with the ink

the manufacturer shoved into my pen,

but with blood painfully resolved in tears.

 

i weep for my nation…

 

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