A poet never knows when it is right to say ‘I’m a poet’

You have been teaching poetry in the UNited States for some time and over the last one week, you’ve been teaching poetry in Nigeria. What differences and similarities have you noticed? I think in Nigeria there is more of a sense of tradition, the tradition of poetry and in the United States the poetry I […]

You have been teaching poetry in the UNited States for some time and over the last one week, you’ve been teaching poetry in Nigeria. What differences and similarities have you noticed?

I think in Nigeria there is more of a sense of tradition, the tradition of poetry and in the United States the poetry I see tends to be way more kind of contemporary, less formal often, more plain spoken but also in the entirety to think of the role of poetry as less hallowed, there is less of  a kind of reverence about poetry than here. So here it’s very powerful and almost spiritual, I think.

In terms of the vibrancy, they say African poetry is vibrant. Do you agree with that assessment?

Yes, it’s so. Nature is very important to them.

Let’s talk about your own poetry now; you started off as an engineer and went on to study other things before turning ing to poetry. Why this sinuous route, if I may say so?

Oh, what I like, and I like it in poetry also, is this kind of way of figuring things out. I think of poetry as a little puzzle. They are similar, engineering and poetry, they are trying to say something, figure out a way to say something and I think of poetry as patterns and syntax and the language. It may be different but not too different form, engineering. It happens that when someone is young they are trying to figure out what they want to do and poetry sort of makes a lot of sense to me in that kind of way. It’s like the first time I did photography. I would see images in my mind and process them, that was before digital photography where you will have to go to a dark room and process the blank paper and the chemicals and the image appears and there’s something different between what you had imagined and what you see and it feels like some kind of magic. So I love poetry in a way that I haven’t loved the science and I was lucky because I was able to pursue poetry and get work teaching poetry fairly young in life.

Was there a wow moment for you when you first discovered poetry?

You know I have to say I heard this famous African American poet Maya Angelou talk. She was just talking about reading different kinds of poetry from different kind of countries and she has this wonderful voice, just the sound of her voice and in some ways that made me want to start exploring. And I also studied in Vienna, Austria, first semester, and I think there is a thing about being around the art and architecture, it really opened up my mind and made me want to pursue poetry. So I signed up for this class in poetry, which was sort of by mistake . . .

A mistake? How was it a mistake?

A mistake because I was studying abroad and I was studying science and I needed to take one more course to finish this certain part of my degree but maybe the class was full so I ended up signing for this poetry class and I didn’t really consider that I would actually be writing poetry and I got there and it was an advanced class and I wasn’t advanced, and there were five students. I kept trying to drop out of the class but the teacher wouldn’t let me. So that was really how I came into poetry.

You discovered poetry by mistake; have you been enjoying it?

Well, I have to say my grandmother wrote poetry and painted, so it’s one of those things. I don’t know if I would say it’s by mistake. I mean I always sort of wrote in notebooks and I feel I’ve had these sensibilities of a poet. And because my grandmother wrote, I always thought I would write at some point so it wasn’t a total mistake. Have I been enjoying it? Yes, I mean, yes. I like different parts of poetry. I like reading poetry and I like studying poetry, I consider them to be different things. So when I teach poetry I analyse things. I don’t think you have to be writing beautiful poetry all the time. You have to be doing other things also.

So you are a full time poet, apart from the teaching of course?

Yes, apart from the teaching, which is a full time job. Teaching is a full time job, but I write poetry on the side.

And engineering has been totally relegated to the background?

Yes.

Totally?

Yeah, yeah. I had always studied poetry since I was 18 or 19 years old. I had a job one summer but no more.

In terms of your poems, what inspires them?

What inspires me? You know, looking at the world inspires me, other artists inspire me, painting inspires and I consider myself sort of an explorer. I’m always sort of trying to find things that interest me and figure out why they interest me, juxtapose things and see what new things I can make.

Which of your poems would you say you have the greatest emotional connection to?

I just finished writing a book-length poem about my mother who passed away . . .

A book-length poem?

Yeah, and I would say that that is the most personal piece I’ve ever written.

How difficult was it, writing that poem?

It wasn’t difficult at all. I mean, it was difficult emotionally and it was very sad but it was a very unusual . . . probably . . . I’m publishing a book in November and then I have this book that I have written after that. Otherwise, I’m a very slow writer. The book that I am publishing in November, I worked on for ten years, so it is very unusual that I was able to write this book pretty quickly. Even though I have to go back to it, it came quickly. I consider that a kind of a gift, I don’t expect it to happen again [laughs].

Do you labour when you write your poems, does it come in spurts or does it just flow?

I labour when I write, I work and I have many, many drafts, piles of draft. It takes a lot for me to write whatever I have written and I often don’t like what I have written for a very long time so I work on it for a very long time and sometimes when you do that, out of that comes a poem that you like.

Sometimes a poem that you like comes quickly and it’s because you’ve been working so hard on other poems.

You have three collections now . . .

I have two and one is coming out in November.

Ok. So what would you say has been the highlight for you as a poet?

Oh, you know, I was very honoured to have my first book taken. When you are a young poet, you never know, a poet never knows when you feel comfortable saying I’m a poet, you keep going if this happens, if that happens and when I had my first book accepted when I was very young, I was very proud of that and looking back at that now, that work feels very far away from me. But I was very proud of that at the time, I was proud to get into graduate school and when I got in . . . it’s very hard to publish a book and when your first book is accepted, it feels really good.

Your first book, Designs, won the Colorado Prize in 2000, was it something you imagined would happen?

When I started I had no imagination of that happening. I had a very encouraging teacher but I didn’t believe her. I am always hard on myself [laughs] I didn’t know. Once I was in graduate school, and it was a very good graduate school, and many of my classmates were very ambitious and we all sent our works away. I was very surprised when my book was taken.

What was your first reaction when they called you?

I was very happy [laughs] I was happy. It wasn’t too complex, you know. It was actually, looking back, when you go to graduate school and you write your thesis and make a book like a collection of poetry and basically that is what I published. Now I tell my students don’t do that, never do that. Take more time.  I was very young and I spent time, I wrote like crazy, those years I had a lot of work and in some ways that was very personal. I think a poet’s first book is this kind of outpouring of emotion you’ve been carrying around for a long time on your mind and it’s been experimental, you know. For me that was very difficult.

Having taught poetry for a while now, from your point of view, what do you think the future of poetry is?

The future of poetry is good. You know, people talk about this a lot, is poetry dead, do people read poetry? I don’t know, I don’t feel it’s sort of my lifework to evangelise poetry. I feel that to me it means a lot to teach poetry, it’s important to pay attention to things, to be slow. I think it’s important to pay attention to language, I think it’s important to teach. In the United States at least, it’s still hard to publish, there are really different kinds of publishing houses; really big, really small, but I think there’s a lot. A lot of men and women are being published, there seems to be place for different kinds of publishing. The internet has made publishing more possible and made more world wide audience possible.

There’s this tendency of young poets here rushing quicklyto the printers or publishers to have their collections published. Is this also common in the United States?

Yes, yes, yes and because I teach graduate students I am constantly telling them to be patient and I also think that, and from my own experience, I think it is wise to take it slow, really publish quality. A lot of people said to me when I was really young, you really should do poetry because you love it, you love the process of it and I think that’s true because I don’t think there is any kind of publication that will satisfy what you really desire, it may make you proud but what’s more important is writing poetry and I try to discourage students from getting too crazy at a very young age with publishing.

Which poets would you say have had the greatest influence on you and your work?

I studied with an American poet called Jorie Graham, who was my first teacher in graduate school and she had a tremendous influence on me. Poets who are not living; I always used to say American poet Elizabeth Bishop, her work has been important to me, Gerard Manley Hopkins, British poet, very interested in sound, very intense prosody, and exchanging different words, always important to me.

Maybe we should talk about Nigeria now. When you were coming for this workshop, did you have any perceptions or ideas about Nigerian poetry? Have you read Nigerian poetry?

Yes, I have read some Nigerian poetry. I read some Soyinka before I came here and I have read some bits and pieces of Nigerian poetry and I  have to say that I am ashamed, that my [workshop] students and I, I am going to ask them to give me their favourite Nigerian poems and we are going to read them. But certainly, I have enjoyed the poetry of my students, the liveliness and enthusiasm of my students here.

And how have you found your stay here?

It’s great, it’s very interesting. It’s very different from where I live. I am hoping I am going to see more of it, as you know we have been kind of in this hotel. I have been out a little bit and it’s very nice to be here with Helon [Habila], he’s my friend and colleague in the US, I have great respect for him and I feel excited to read more Nigerian writing. It’s great to be to a place you’ve never been before and meet people in this kind of way.

You’ve trained several students here. What future do you see for them?

You know, it’s hard to say. There are some people that are really talented and I hope that what future they have is a future of really enjoying poetry and a lot of students have asked me about publishing and unfortunately, I don’t have the answer in the United States and I really don’t have the answer for the people here, I don’t know the system here. But it’s been phenomenal to work with young poets who are so eager and who have come from different places to study poetry.

I am curious. Have you ever contemplated prose?

Yes, I quite like reading prose fiction and I like the sound of prose, I like reading Faulkner, I like reading Proust, I like reading Melville, Moby Dick, I love reading dense lyrical prose and I often will read it before I write. I actually hear fiction writers say they read poetry before they write prose. I have often thought of writing a book that’s going to combine prose and poetry. I am interested in the possibilities of a cross between poetry and non-fiction; there is a lot of that kind of writing in the States actually. Every time I try to do it, I never get to a place where I can publish it. I write essays on poets but, I would like to try that. I have written short pieces but I’ve never written anything I would like to publish [Laughs]

Why have you been reluctant to publish?

I don’t think it’s good [Laughs] that’s the thing with publishing. You don’t publish something you don’t think is good because it’s there. I would not like to be known only for my first book as if what you have written is a history of yourself.