According to George Orwell, the historical background of civilization is ‘largely the history of weapons’. This astute perspective appears several times throughout this collection. In ‘Jana’ and ‘Martyr of Daily Bread’, Bobi recounts the deaths of two Palestinian girls, Jana and Ra’afat Al-issa, who were both killed by Israeli soldiers in 2022. The two poems bear similar motif—violence. The reader is thrown into a war scene and are made to watch how ‘Ra’afat’s body // was mapped with bullets’ and how ‘a daughter (Jana). a girl, named. loved. // was shot. nine times. // skull. shattered. haemorrhaged. in a pool.’  

Like Michael Imossan’s For the Love of Country and Memory, which borders on countrymen left destitute by war, Bobi’s book foregrounds the same idea, but also explores other tragic losses outside Nigeria. The eponymous poem, ‘Cadaver of Red Roses’, encapsulates the inescapable reality of these tragedies where the speaker laments:  

the garden: a cadaver of red roses. 
the thing is: we have been broken 
to walk through healing tunnels  
without shattering into bits that hope can’t decode.
here, there is an inheritance the tongue holds; 
revisiting the same saltwater that we’ve driven in. 
do you see how everything that sips water rusts? 

The harrowing incidents embedded in the collection corroborates the statement of the late English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who described the natural state of humanity as: ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. Hobbes also believed that without a system of government, humans are bound to live in a state of conflict and violence. Whereas, judging by the constant conflicts ensuing among mankind, Bobi, in her debut collection, further makes the case for the possibility of violence in democratic states despite a central authority vested with power to curtail such.  

Indeed, Cadaver of Red Roses is a compelling chapbook that reminds us of the imminent doom facing a world bent on its own destruction. Not only does the book succeed as an inciting collection that manages to arouse the readers’ attention to the world around them, it also exerts an unforgettable pathos on political leaders about the consequences of their actions, subtly demanding positive change. As much as the themes explored in the collection focus on the harsh political climate of Nigeria, it is significant to the public and informs every reader anywhere in the world about the unpalatable end result of wars, failed leadership, and prejudices. In hindsight, this collection secures Bobi an important space in the contemporary Nigerian poetry as a poet whose writings deserve utmost attention and critical study⎈