Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back poet Jonathan Chibuike Ukah, who resides in the UK, with “A Dream of Happiness,” one of our “Dreams” poetry contest finalists. The poet declares his intention to weave his dreams, his expectations, from his experience rather than from visions of utopia. “I weave a dream out of my nightmares,/ out of the ordinary things I magnify,/ out of the things I experience every day,/ like the air, the shadows following me around,/ the silhouette of my failures, my ailing, my disease;/ nothing is a waste; nothing is banal and baseless.” There is great strength to be found in grounding ourselves in reality and learning to adapt and thrive where we find ourselves. Experience teaches us discernment and shows us that circumstances are not always as we expect them to be–we don’t actually understand what is good and what is bad for us.
Jonathan’s imagery is rich, drawing heavily from nature, his voice resonant and orational. We are encouraged to look at our lives and recognize the patterns there…the blessings that come from hardship and the hardships that come from blessings. It is all one piece, as our lives are the sum of all our experience.
Read “A Dream of Happiness” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023 and was the Editor’s Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024. He was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright Poetry Prize 2024 and the Second Poetry Prize Winner of The Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024.