How almajiris inspired me to become a poet – Denja Abdullahi

You have just come out with two poetry collections, one for the young readers and the other for a more mature audience. How successful would you say the launch was? The launch was very successful in all ramifications. The audience was impressive, the packaging in terms of entertainment and management of the components of the […]

You have just come out with two poetry collections, one for the young readers and the other for a more mature audience. How successful would you say the launch was?

The launch was very successful in all ramifications. The audience was impressive, the packaging in terms of entertainment and management of the components of the event was just right. From the feedback I have received from those who attended the event, I can conclude with all modesty that the launch was one that would be talked about for a long time. In terms of what came through for me as the author, I can say it is just okay as money was not the primary focus of the launch but the building of relationship with people and leveraging on past relationships

The Talking Drum is obviously targeted at young readers. What made you choose this audience?

I was very convinced that the subject matter of the collection is what our young readers dearly need. We are breeding culturally rootless children in our homes and schools and it is not good at all for the future of our country. I therefore wrote the book focussing on the various spectacles of our cultural heritage for our young ones to contemplate and get to know that there are things to be proud of in this country which are wholly indigenous to us.

Obviously, your background in the culture sector reflects heavily in the work. How much of an influence was it?

The cultural influence was all there as most things I wrote about in that book were things I directly experience  regularly as a worker in the culture sector and a few others were things I read about or thought of.Beyond being influenced,one had to process that influence  actively to effect a public good as it is very obvious that I am not the only person being influenced that way.Influence is not as  important as what you make of it.

 

A Thousand Years of Thirst was written for more mature readers. It is just coming out now and obviously it has been on ice for long. What is the story, were you hoarding your own poems?

That would have been my first published collection as I had completed the main template of the work since 1998 when I was lecturing in The Polytechnic, Birnin-Kebbi now Waziri Umaru Federal Polytechnic,Birnin-Kebbi.It got delayed because of lack of the wherewithal to get it out as that had been the reality of publishing poetry or any other creative work in Nigeria for quite a while now. Later, when I was ready to publish, the manuscript got lost and I had to go through a retrieval process that was very laborious; after that it got lost again for the second time and the process was repeated.In the meantime,some of the poems appeared in several published anthologies and were well received.I must say with the benefit of hindsight that the outing now afforded me the opportunity to refine some pieces, put the poems in better perspectives and allowed me to infuse several new poems into the present collection.

What made you think this is the right time to bring this out?

Everything in life has its right moment and I think the coming out of this collection is just right because a perceptive reader who is familiar with my writings will be able to measure my early voice as a poet(because some of the poems in that collection were written in the early period of my literary career)with the later poems I have written, some of which are included in the same collection. The collection is like a summary of my poetic life in the past three decades and therefore very ripe now to climb the stage.

Poetry is a rather intimate form of expression. How intimate is this collection to you?

I agree poetry is the most intimate of all art forms and it is one in which it is difficult to be insincere or to contrive situations or observations. I can say poetry is the most sincere of all literary genres. I can say  that much of what you find in the collection are very autobiographical and that is why in the launching promo about the work I added the rider “a poet’s journey through life”.

What tickles your muse? What makes you pick up a pen and write?

Having something to say tickles me. Extraordinary expressions overheard or ordinary situations depicting the comical ordinariness of life can set me writing. Environmentally, I am not your moody kind of writer who needs absolute silence to write, I like writing in a noisy  and tensed atmosphere, silence sometimes depress my writing regimen. Anything can inspire me to write, as long as that thing is loud and bright enough to get me going.

At what point in your life did you realise you want to be a poet?

During my undergraduate days at the University of Jos when I encountered so much poetry in class and when I wrote my first conscious poem after experiencing the almajari boys feeding on leftovers at the basement of the then magnificient Jos Main Market building.This realisation of wanting to be a poet became reinforced when I met Niyi Osundare at the University of Ibadan on a research trip towards my undergraduate thesis which I wrote on that his seminal poetry volume “The Eye of the Earth”.

Poetry does not enjoy the exposure of prose. You find most poetry collections being self published. Why is this so?

Everybody wants to hear or listen to a good story, no one wants to bother his head with the verbal gymnastics that often is the preoccupation with poetry. Poets are never your popular writers. Think about it, among all the writers you find glamourised all over the world today, do you find poets among them? It is not because poets are not worthy of such glamour but it is because people’s minds are already prejudiced against poetry. Ironically poetry is the oldest of all the literary genres and can be said to have given birth to all the other forms. Prose sells,poetry hardly sells unless buyers have a pre-knowledge of the poet’s abilities and the average reader will pick up a novel or a drama before a poetry collection and that is why the poet may have to self-publish as no publisher will stake his money on mere reputation. I in my own way I have been able to surmount these disabilities of poetry by writing poetry that is narratively meaningful, recounting humour-packed experiences and in forms that will definitely excite the reader. People have read me and have said to me they could never believe that poetry can be such fun.I will continue in my crusade of popularising poetry.

You have been in the literary arena for a while now and you have seen a lot of new poems coming out. How would you assess these?

The good, the bad and the downright ugly have been the lots of poetry like any other writing. Definitely, I have  seen very delightful poems being released treating great subject matters and great crafts and I have equally seen works that should not be on the shelf at all in the name of poetry. People think it is easy to write poetry but it is  a genre with a deceptive simplicity of production but which must strive harder than any genre to make any impact. You call yourself a poet and so what? People can say that to you, they wont say that to a novelist, an engaging storyteller or a dramatist who immediately confronts them with actions and situations of conflict. As a poet, you need to prove that you merit their attention not by bothering their heads with unfathomable constructions but by the loftiness of your expressions and your ability to connect with their expectations.

Don’t you think that the fact that anyone can write what he considers poetry and self publish it is choking the shelves with poorly written poems?

I am a poet but I am very impatient with doggerels masquerading as pacts. If your first line does not arrest my attention, I do not read further. I have heard people say the first line or paragraph of a novel must be  gripping or they do not read further. If that be the case for a voluble form as the novel then what do we demand of poetry which is a much more compressed form? The poet must go the extra mile to be relevant and recognised and how to get there depends on the facility and competence available to each aspiring poet. Those choking the shelves with poorly written or poorly conceived poetry will soon fall out from there

Finally, Denja Abdullahi has been associated with ANA for so long. Are you going to run for an elective office at this year’s convention, the presidency perhaps?

I see every position as purely  an opportunity to serve, to affect people positively and to contribute my own quota to movements, trends and developments. As a past General secretary of the Association the only other positions available to me to aspire to is the vice presidency and the presidency. I may run for any of these positions now or in the future in the fullness of time.