Now is a great time to be a poet in Nigeria – Gbenga Adesina
Gbenga Adesina is joint winner of the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Adesina’s chapbook, “Painter of Water” was released in April. Here, he talks about why Diaspora African artists are as authentic as those in Africa, his win, writing style and more. Bookshelf: You are a joint winner of the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. […]
Gbenga Adesina is joint winner of the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Adesina’s chapbook, “Painter of Water” was released in April. Here, he talks about why Diaspora African artists are as authentic as those in Africa, his win, writing style and more.
Bookshelf: You are a joint winner of the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. How do you feel?
Gbenga Adesina: Ecstatic beyond measure. Surprised, blown away. I’m still trying to believe it. I suspect that I fainted when I saw the mail.
You know, we had this series of interviews leading to the announcement that was published on a well curated blog by Geosi Gyasi. And from the interviews you could easily tell that every single person on that shortlist is an incredibly gifted artist and brilliant practitioner. So when the interviewer asked what I thought was my chance of winning, I said being on that list is a blessing. A big one. Some of the most amazing poets of our generation are on that list. And I don’t take that for granted. These guys have done incredible things with their gifts; they have touched the world, touched the skies, gone to the best schools in the world and have excellent pedigrees to show for it. But, Geosi, ours are the stars too, right?”
It was that line that came to my mind again when I was declared a winner [Ours are the stars too]. Now let me say this. I’m of the opinion that my friend Kiki, a painter and writer who grew up and live in Los Angeles, but is of African descent is as authentic an African artist and has as much to say as my poet friend Ibukun, who grew up and live in Abeokuta. Our sociological realities may vary but I think the creative energies and that incandescent soul from which we derive are interlinked. That said, my friends often try to point my attention to the perceived dichotomy between, say African writers who grew up in the Diaspora and those here on the home continent. I’m sure this perception is not exactly concerned with “writerly” ability or talent as it were but more on the type of education obtainable when compared across spectra, on opportunities and reward systems that allow you to dedicate or not to dedicate yourself to your craft and enabling resources. But not resources like libraries or good and latest books.
But this generation is already trouncing that, right? Abubakar Adam Ibrahim comes to mind. Elnathan John too, Rotimi Babatunde and others. It’s such a great feeling, particularly when I got a mail saying “Young man, you live and write in Nigeria? Awesome, Awesome.”
Bookshelf: Your poems for the prize were described by the judges as powerfully political, beautiful and truly searing. You addressed concerns of injustice, memory, migration and family. What was your inspiration?
Adesina: Maybe the stories that surround me. Maybe the things that speaks to me most intensely. I’m human first, then a poet, right? My poetry is an extension of my humanness. The things I feel strongly about as a human being naturally find expression in my poetry.
Everydayness is the single most important quality to me in writing. I’m irremediably moved and susceptible to human narratives and I try to display a certain fidelity in rendering them.
I travel a lot and see things. I meet people. I hear stories. I have my own stories, my own loss, my own love. To cradle a song and carry it around: A pendant on your neck of memories. It is of these things I write. For me the ultimate politics is the politics of being human. To be susceptible in your craft to the things humans are susceptible to in their lived lives, to be human, to be vulnerable, a part of a sequence of connected destinies. To not look away, to refuse to forget; to loan your voice, as it were, to those who might not have one. This rage is private, bodily felt.
Bookshelf: What do you hope to achieve when you write?
Adesina: As an artist, anytime I’m brooding or working on a piece my ultimate goal is often to create something that resonates, that comes across as emotionally true, something that moves, that sticks to memory, speaks to people, something people are compelled to speak back to. Of course, it is almost always an impossible task.
But broadly speaking, “writerly” goals or trajectories are things I’m not sure one can sculpt. You can only just try. I mean, I’ll like to write a couple of anthologies that try hard to move the equation forward. One hopes one might be extremely lucky to write a significant book in one’s lifetime as impossible as that is. And I really want to teach. I love teaching: the pull and pull of ideas, the openness of mind like water and that joy that cannot be touched to know that people are kinder now, better now because you led them to words.
Bookshelf: Some readers are not fans of poetry, probably because of the head work involved in deciphering hidden meanings. What do you have to say about that?
Adesina: I think going forward that’s a question we as a generation are going to have to confront at a certain level. Do you want to write complex, inaccessible texts or do you want to create the sound tracks to the dreams of a generation? That’s a question a young artist will have to ask on a private artistic basis I suppose. None of these choices is superior to the other. It’s just artistic choice. And this idea of complexity and inaccessibility is across genres, though perhaps more pronounced in poetry.
We have to remind ourselves of living examples among us: Niyi Osundare, a writer of extraordinary significance wrote some of the most significant and brilliantly crafted works of his and our time. The verdict is out already. And he’s accessible too. He is as significant and widely read and perpetuated as any novelist or playwright of his time. Even more. Pablo Neruda was everywhere. Warsan Shire’s chapbooks sold out within days earlier this year. Breyten Breytenbach once told me (at a residency on Goree Island, Senegal) of a particular and unforgettable night he spent with Mamoud Darwish, that poet of such largeness and soul in the occupied territory of Palestine. He said as Mamoud read his poems out loud in the ancient theatre of Ramallah, people swirled and sighed with emotions; the atmosphere thick with fervor. He said Mahmoud Darwish would read a line and the people will respond with the next because they knew the work by heart.
Bookshelf: That said, how will you describe your style?
Adesina: That’s a very difficult question, right? I mean one can’t really say these things when one is the subject matter. My friends have always been kind to me. I have always relied on them to tell me what my poems are saying. They were the ones who fashioned a pattern and said: “your poems seem to loop around love and loss.” Lyric is important to me. I believe in putting powerful lines at the service of strong emotions. But again I find myself returning to what I said about being human first and then a poet and how my poetry is an extension of my humanness. Of course, like John Burnside said: ‘I dare not speak for mankind. I know so little of myself.’ I try to be susceptible in my craft to the things humans are susceptible to in their lived lives: Love. Loss. Human narratives.
And perhaps I should add that the poets and writers that move me the most move me in this direction: Oswald Mtshali, John Burnside, Niyi Osundare, Onesimo Silveira, Kwame Dawes, George Szirtes, Gabriel Okara, Yusef Komunyakaa, Okogbule Wonudi, Frank O’ Hara, Sharon Olds, W.B Yeats, T.S. Elliot and lately Kei Miller, Sarah Howe and Mona Arshi and others.
Bookshelf: Your poem ‘Painter of Water’ had depth and yet simplicity that sent the message home. Can you share what led to the making of those lines?
Adesina: I see things. They speak to me powerfully. I want you to see them too. So I write a poem. In this case it was, narrowly speaking, about the experiences in the Sahelian-Saharan fraction of our humanity in these past years. How a black vision of the world and extremism had sought to reduce our humanity to nothingness. I wanted to write about hope and unbroken songs in the face of such blistering court of inhumanity and flight of dignity.
Bookshelf: How do you view the development of poetry in Nigeria?
Adesina: This is a great time to be a poet in this country. There’s so much positive energy. The zeitgeist is great. From the spoken form to crafts of the page or screen, the sense of innovation, of borderlessness is just so overwhelming, young poets sending their works, connecting to international platforms, starting their own and so on. Across the continent, it’s something else entirely. So powerful. There is Babisha Niwe, a great platform pushing for a continent immersed in poetry. Beverly Nambozo, the founder, a friend and motivator called to tell me beforehand that I was going to win. Of course, I was skeptical. Poetry is making a rebound. The zeitgeist is powerful. I hope the academia pays attention this time around. It’s going to be awful if western academia outpaces them in curating, cataloguing and engaging this new burst of songs.
Bookshelf: How did you start writing?
Adesina: What I do remember clearly is that I came to any form of craft through orality. Lengthy memory verses in the Sunday school, long passages of a play or a novel declaimed entirely from memory in the course of acting in a play or any of such occasions that childhood are often made of. So till now, people often point out a link between the way I write and how I speak. I don’t honestly know if there is a link. My childhood home was peopled by books that were older than me, so discovering them, conquering them as it were was one feature of growing up that I remember with so much fondness. You know, to rummage through the big drawer in the corridor and discover a thick, leather bound book that looks like a good thing to tear into pieces for a paper plane except that your aunt hurriedly rescues it from you because you are actually holding a volume of Charles Dickens or Ernest Hemingway or something like that. I had physical contacts with some books several years before I could even read or comprehend them: I specifically remember Wole Soyinka’s “The Lion and Jewel.” I remember “The Interpreters.” There was Camara Laye’s “The African Child,” George Orwell’s “The Animal Farm,” D.O Fagunwa’s “Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Eledumare.” My dad was given to expression through the pen; anytime he travelled, he would write a letter to each one of us and our mum.
Bookshelf: Is there any reason why poetry took center stage in your writing career?
Adesina: Poetry is what has pushed me into some form of mild limelight as it were. I write plays with devotion. I love narrative arcs and how fiction and non-fiction are extended metaphors in themselves. I sometimes do social inquiries that find expression as expose or journalism or data journalism. But for me, poetry has to run through all of them. That dreamy elusiveness, that intenseness of vision, to use silence as a voice, to put carefully curated words at the service of strong emotions.
I’m ever interested in transcendental language. I’m looking for transport. I’m looking for a language that keels me over. I’m looking for a tongue of water or fire or urgency or something, something elusive. I’m looking for illumination. And poetry offers that tightness and density to sidestep conventional syntax and cut straight into the soul of things. Poetry takes me to where I want to be in an instant.
Bookshelf: What do you do besides writing?
Adesina: I do social and peace work. I am also a trainer with a communications firm and contribute in panel discussions.