Gesiere Brisibe-Dorgu:

Creativity Renews Her Life

The first thing you notice about Gesiere Brisibe-Dorgu is her vitality. It is not only her trim physique and obvious good health that reflects this but also her intellectual curiosity. She possesses a bright and always inquisitive conversational style. In recent times she has actualised this quality of her life in an outpouring of books and dynamic semi-abstract paintings. These she exhibited recently in the lobby of the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja.

Only a few of the visitors to this unique exhibition were aware however of the real magic of what they were witnessing. Gesiere who sought the ticket of the PDP to run for Governor of Bayelsa State  in 2003 and again in 2007 is an extraordinary Nigerian. She only began to paint in the last one year and yet her paintings display a primitive strength and graphic maturity that suggests a long creative gestation. Even her prolific literary output represents a late beginning since this youthful looking mother of five adult children who is now in her mid-fifties only began putting her writings together in publishable form about seven years ago. Today she is the author of over a dozen books ranging from short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, to inspirational essays, and a travelogue about journeying in the Holy Land. I began writing casually in 1996 with no intention whatsoever of publishing. It was just a way of putting down ideas that came to me and sharing them with friends. I would write poems about my thoughts and give them to friends who visited my office and some of them would say they were so impressed that they thought I should publish, but it was not until 2001 when my husband and I moved to Abuja that some people really encouraged me to try publishing a collection of my works. Although I started with poetry I developed other forms of literary expression just naturally, I can't really say how or why this happened I just found myself doing it.

The forms just emerged naturally and now I find that I fit the form to the type of idea that I want to express. I cannot really say why it took me so long to unleash my creative side. I think it was just a matter of it happening at the right time. As I moved around and discussed with people I was always observing certain things and they touched me so much I wanted to comment on them. I started to write these comments down in order preserve them and share them. Particularly in politics I observed that people were not always aware of their rights and that those who went into politics often went into it not to serve but to exploit the people. I wanted to change this and so I tried to get elected myself in order to show by example what I felt should be the right way to serve. It could very well be that I basically began to write down my thoughts in order get people to ask themselves hard questions rather than simply to accept the injustices around them. If I cannot get elected at least I can let my readers know my views.