Hajo Isa: A writer waiting to explode

Hailing from Zuru, in Kebbi State, Hajo started writing poetry from very early on, when she was in secondary school at Federal Government College, Jos. But the foundation was laid much earlier when the literary bug spread by her father caught her. He was a military officer and read a lot. She caught his passion […]

Hailing from Zuru, in Kebbi State, Hajo started writing poetry from very early on, when she was in secondary school at Federal Government College, Jos. But the foundation was laid much earlier when the literary bug spread by her father caught her. He was a military officer and read a lot. She caught his passion and started reading a lot as well.
“My father is a reading man,” she said. “I’ve always grown in awe of my father’s ability to read literature on the go. I developed interest in literature. In secondary school, you would always find a Pace Setter lying here, a Chinua Achebe there.”
She read those and more and soon, the maiden fell in love with the worlds that literature creates. Soon enough, she too started penning down her own works. She was moved by several factors. One of them was that she was coy. She kept much to herself and thoughts blossomed in her mind. The best way to get them out, she decided was through poetry.
“I can’t remember when exactly I picked my pen and started scribbling but I know it was in secondary school, in JS two or so,” she said.
But beneath the veils shyness has cast over her heart burns an intense passion. This passion manifests in her fears, her love and her perceptions of day to day occurrences. Her poetry effortlessly transcends themes, driven by her mood or muse.

Mango poetry
“Each term, I would get a notebook and write,” she said and when pressed on what those early writings were about, she said,” It could be on anything that came to my mind. I wrote about mangoes, I wrote about my fears, I wrote about what I loved,” and then added: “I love mangoes a lot.”
But most of those early poetries did not endure. They were lost or destroyed.
“It could be during relocations, or deliberately I destroy my poems,” she said. But why would a writer destroy the child of her imagination, one wonders.
“Just like that,” she said. “Sometimes it could be during some very emotional periods and I just destroy them or they just get lost. I’ve been very careless over the years but now I am learning to appreciate my works.”
There was palpable nostalgia in her voice as she remembers one of her favourite poems. Of course it was about mango. She could not remember how she lost it. Self-destroying ones work may be a product of the tide of emotions but Hajo did also move a lot while growing up. Her father was in the army and the family was constantly on the move. She was born in Lagos for instance had lived in Enugu and has schooled in Jos and Zaria.
This constant movement has broadened her scope, adding some varied background to her poetry and outlook on life. She still retains her coyness but she is not the typical northern girl. For one, she is a self confessed agnostic.
“I’ve come to better appreciate people and see that Nigerians are very unique people, and I have come to realise that we all want the same thing it’s just the way we go about them,” she said.
All her varied experiences are reflected in her poetry because her poetry is an extension of herself. “I think I try to make my poetry mirror myself,” she said.
Evolution
Over the years, Hajo’s taste in literature has evolved from those adolescent readings. She now reads Stephen King, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and other classic English literature which she loves.
“I think I’m an anglophile to a certain degree,” she confessed. Her love for the English culture does not however detract from her love for Nigerian literature. She reels out the names of Chimamanda Adichie, Adaobi Nwaubani, Zaynab Alkali, Buchi Emecheta and the grandmasters, Soyinka and Achebe, as some of her favourites.
In poetry, she turns to South America, to the poetry of Pablo Neruda and his likes.
This evolution also reaches out to her craft as she has started experimenting writing short stories. She believes she has not yet mastered the craft but she is working on it.

Feminism and challenges
The 2004 law graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria admits she has some feminist tendencies. Her bias for female writers is evident. She said it is no accident.
“I am a feminist. I won’ call myself a radical feminist but I am sympathetic to females because I am one. I think we still have a long way to go in enjoying social and economic freedoms that men enjoy,” she said.
She however conceded that her creativity has not been repressed because of her gender. She has other reasons to stay the cause.
“I think what helps me more as a writer is that I am a very emotional being and I channel my emotions and sometimes I could just visualize myself in someone else’s shoes and imagine the pain of a heartbreak or a woman carrying a heavy burden on her back and then having a small child to take care of,” she said.
What then has been her greatest challenge in her writing career so far?
“Getting to appreciate my identity,  getting to appreciate myself as a person, growing up; the experience of growing up. I think that has been a great challenge to me and connecting to the world and people.”
And of course there was the little issue of overcoming her shyness to present her poems to a critical audience. The first time, she did, it was a personal and artistic triumph for her.

Tommorow
Currently working in the Supreme Court, Hajo has an eye on the bench someday. But in the immediate future, she would want to publish several collections in the next five years.
For now, she is content with honing her skills, reading some interesting literature and waiting to explode, literarily.