Tag Archives: African Poets

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize: A Dialogue With Sahro Ali

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Sahro Ali is a Somali-Australian hybrid. Her work explores ghosts of the diaspora, memories and trauma. She is a managing editor at Kerosene Magazine, a fledgling literary magazine created by and for marginalized artists. Her work is forthcoming in an anthology of anti-Trump work called CONTRA, which will be published by Kerosene. She is inspired by the women in her life who encourage and cultivate radical writing. She hopes one day to make them proud. She tweets @sahroaIi.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the vibrant Victoria in Melbourne, Australia by Email.

Gaamangwe: Sahro, congratulations on being shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. What does it mean for you to be shortlisted?

Sahro: Thank you! I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, there were so many amazing and talented poets who entered. I didn’t really think I’d make the cut. The literary community is huge and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel like you’re not really a poet / writer if you’re not churning out something every day. For me it’s acknowledging that I am actually a writer. It’s easy to get lost in your own head sometimes.

Gaamangwe: It’s really exciting to read all of these works. What inspires your poetry?

Sahro: I’m in that early-stage of being a writer where all I can write about is my past experiences and trauma. Which results in crude imagery and language, and I feel like it’s jarring in certain poems. I have a lot of ugly truths to write about and that’s what inspires me to write most of the time. Things that people tend to shy away from and/or are tentative when approaching them. Using soft language to talk about something that’s inherently evil and harrowing is powerful but so is using crude language. It’s like you’re meeting it face to face, and seeing it for what it is, if that makes sense. Other things that inspire me are my friends and how unafraid they are in everything they do.

Gaamangwe: It’s really inspiring and empowering that at the early-stage of your writing, you are already going deep in your traumas. That really takes courage. What traumas from your past experiences are important for you to write about? What do you hope to illuminate about your ugly truths?

Sahro: I’m a daughter of immigrants and watching my parents struggle and try to make a living when I was younger was difficult. Especially as I got older, my parents were convinced I was this Anglicized devil. That’s the subject matter for some of my poems–being stuck between borderlines. To answer the second part of your question, I really don’t know. Right now it’s just acknowledging them and accepting them as they are.

Gaamangwe: Is the conviction that you are an Anglicized devil because of your sexuality? Can you talk to me about existing here and how that conviction affected your personal reality?

Sahro: Yes, but it encompasses everything; me not wanting to adhere to Muslim dress codes, not knowing how to speak my native tongue, being bisexual. I was just constantly never meeting my parent’s expectations and their conclusion was ”Ok, you’re just Anglicized.” But in terms of my sexuality, that’s something that’s concealed in real life. I’ve only come out to my mum this year and before that I was closeted. I couldn’t even say the word ”gay” in real life. So I created my own space online and surrounded myself with other LGBT folk, it’s amazing. But once I go offline I’m hit with this toxic, homophobic environment where I have to control every word and movement. Even now, whenever I compliment women on TV, my mum side-eyes me and turns off the TV. Keeping to myself is something I’ve learnt in childhood, even if it’s the painful option. That’s the reality I live right now, to navigate this space as quietly as possible. Something I know I have in common with other young gay people.

Gaamangwe: That’s a really difficult reality to exist in. You captured this difficulty in your poems; “Daughters” and “Dear Mother”. There is this kind of erasure, where the mother forces or attempts to make the speaker become who she wants her to become. It creates a double-life kind of thing. Did that make accepting your sexuality difficult? What has empowered you to get to the point where you could come out to your mother?

Sahro: Oh yeah definitely, I went through that typical ”maybe I’m not gay, I’m just confused” stage when I was coming to terms with my sexuality. I had to unlearn so much internalized homophobia and it was a painful and uncomfortable process (which is common and inevitable when you’re unlearning anything). It was ten times harder because I’m Muslim and all my life I was fed these ideas that you couldn’t be both Muslim and gay. Once I gave myself a space, however small it was, I was able to explore my sexuality and think and reflect. And being around other like-minded young gay people was all the more liberating. Also, I’m a total coward and depended on twenty seconds of courage, which left me the instant I told my mum.

Gaamangwe: I do think that twenty seconds is all the courage you need. You are brave, because there was so much at stake here. Thank you Sahro, and all the best with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

 

 

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlists: A Dialogue With Rasaq Malik

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Rasaq Malik is a graduate of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals, including Michigan Quaterly Review, Poet Lore, Spillway, Rattle, Juked, Connotation Press, Heart Online Journal, Grey sparrow, Jalada, and elsewhere. He is a two-time nominee for Best of the Net Nominations. His poem was among the finalists for the 2015 Best of the Net Nominations. Recently, Rattle Magazine and Poet Lore nominated his poems for the 2017 Pushcart Prize.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the dense, city of seven hills, Ibadan, Nigeria via Skype.

Gaamangwe: Rasaq, congratulations on being shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. What does it mean to you to be shortlisted?

Rasaq: I have been applying for the competition, every year since it started in 2013, and as a writer, you always hope that when you apply for a competition, you end up shortlisted or you win. So when I received the message that I was shortlisted, I was overjoyed. Being shortlisted means a lot to me, and my country Nigeria. We are pulling our hearts out and representing Nigeria in a big way, over there. So I am very happy, and truly grateful.

Gaamangwe: That’s interesting that you’ve been applying for the past five years. If you look back at your past entries, what do you think was different about this entry?

Rasaq: I believe that I got shortlisted because of the consistency, and the passion and just refusing to relent. There is a slight difference in a way—even though I have been exploring the tragic and gloomy aspects of what is happening in my country—in my past entries. I think with this application I was a bit advanced and effective with the language I used. I think it’s also because I have been reading new poetry collections and exploring poetry from other countries.

Gaamangwe: As you mentioned, the theme of your shortlisted poems are very haunting and dark themed. What inspired the poetry that you created with this entry?

Rasaq: I am passionate about the occurrences happening in my country. I think as a writer, you have to mirror society. So, I am interested in documenting the lives of the people that are helpless, especially people in the northern part of Nigeria, where you have Boko Haram killing people. I was doing research and watching documentaries concerning the Boko Haram’s attacks. And I wanted to interrogate and document; what it means to live in that part of the country, what it means to be a parent expecting your child to come back from school, only for them to go missing and never come back, and what it means to survive, live and die in that situation.

Gaamangwe: Have you personally experienced what you wrote about?

Rasaq: I believe that everywhere, there is some kind of war. In the South-west of Nigeria, we don’t necessarily experience war, but we have family, friends and our people living in the northern part of Nigeria. In this digital age, we now have easy access to what is happening in our country, and the world, and so, in this way, we are affected. As a writer, you have to write about what’s happening, especially because there are some aspects of what happens, that is not covered by the media. So what I do is; I read about these things, and if I have the chance and support I travel to that part of the country (because I value the need of going there, and seeing what people experience) and document those experiences. So my poems are imaginings based on real experiences.

Gaamangwe: I applaud you for deriving and humanizing other people’s experience with so much tenderness and believability. What kind of spaces and dialogues would you want your poetry to open up?

Rasaq: I think about the realities of my country and of the world, what we endure, through all the wars happening all over the world. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has infiltrated everywhere and it’s where one realizes; it could be you, it could be anyone that we know and love. Different people have travelled to this part of Nigeria, writing about these events, about the massacres happening in this regions and the abducted Chibok Girls. Of recent, we have not heard any news about Boko Haram. Things are getting better, and we are happy about that. So I think if we keep writing about these events, we reach other people, in the rest of the country and the world, and once people know, then change can happen.

Gaamangwe: You are right, because I am in Botswana and I learnt a lot from reading your poems. We need to humanizing war because a lot of people think of war as something that is outside there. Do you think that documenting and writing what happens in our communities and our realities can actually inspire change in some way?

Rasaq: Yes, I believe we can. I believe most human beings are sympathetic. The more we project and write about what’s happening, the more people can be inspired to reach out to people in war-torn places and refugee camps. We have to write about our realities and experiences because these things are happening to us, and we can’t hide that. Our writings can inspire others, even if that’s one person it doesn’t matter as long as one ponders on what we have written down, then that awareness is something. That awareness can lead to many things—some contribution, some development or some pro-activeness towards what’s happening.

Gaamangwe: That’s true. Can you tell me about the space you had to enter to write “We don’t know where we belong”?

Rasaq: I put myself in that position: what my life will be like if I lived in Borno or in Kabino or any other war-torn places. I imagined myself there in that particular state and experiencing this, people throwing bombs and people dying. So it wasn’t difficult for me to exploit that because I would be writing this as someone who was there. I said earlier that it could be anybody, just because I am not living in that state, doesn’t mean I haven’t been affected in my own way.

In the poem, I tried to talk about home, because this country is not the place to inhabit. A lot of people have died over the years and the only the thing we hear is rest in peace, and that’s about it. It keeps happening. So I could enter this space because not only have I witnessed this, I have been affected by these events for a long time now.

Gaamangwe: You did a really great job as a witness, as someone who is affected, as someone who comes from Nigeria, who lives in that world. What do you hope you would create with your poetry?

Rasaq: I believe that art is a continuous thing, you don’t stop living and you don’t stop writing. I am passionate about writing to document, to narrate and to talk about experiences of other people and my experiences. I want to explore the biographies of people of the world, especially those who are unknown by the world. I hope to create poetry that is a continuous portrayer of everything that happens. So I believe that the continuous portrayal and exploration of events will inspire other people to help in a positive way. People will be able to realise that these things have been happening for a long time and will be able to stand up and act. I believe that in this way writing is transformative as it steers people to reason and act, which is what this world needs right now.

Gaamangwe: I completely agree with everything you have said. Thank you Rasaq, and all the best of luck with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

 

 

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlist: A Dialogue With Leila Chatti

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Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and Dickinson House and prizes from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, Narrative Magazine’s 30 Below Contest, the 8th Annual Poetry Contest, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poems appear in Best New Poets, Ploughshares, Tin House, Narrative, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, West Branch, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she is a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the tiny, tourist beach town of Pronvincetown, USA by Email.

Gaamangwe: Leila, congratulations on being shortlisted for Brunel International African Poetry Prize. What does it mean to you to be shortlisted ?

Leila: Thank you so much! It’s been a dream to be included on this list. I’ve made a point to always begin my bio with the fact I am both Tunisian and American, because it is very important to me to be recognized as both. I don’t want any part of my identity erased for simplification sake. Though I live most of the year in the United States, I also consider Tunisia my home, and it is important to me that I am seen as an African poet as well as an American one. I see this shortlist as a nod to my place in African poetry, and that means a lot to me.

Gaamangwe: How does belonging to two countries influence your sense of identity, and the poetry you write?

Leila: Having two homes has meant I’ve always felt like a bit of an outsider—I’m too Tunisian to be a real American, and too American to be a real Tunisian. I think, of course, there are many ways to be both Tunisian and American, but it does complicate things to belong to more than one culture and place! In my work, I’ve noticed an obsession with longing and distance, which makes a lot of sense to me now that I’m aware of it—if ever I am in one place, I miss the other. I live in a perpetual state of longing. There’s a sense of loss in my work, as well as excess; I have two languages, two cultures, two parent faiths, and they all get jumbled up.

Gaamangwe: I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in that kind of perpetual state of longing. Because I wonder if it can ever be filled? Do you think the two will eventually be whole; not loss, not excess? What are the things that make you too Tunisian for American, and too American for Tunisia?

Leila: I think it is filled with the excess of joy I have; while it’s difficult to always be away from at least one half of my family at all times, I am lucky to have all that love to begin with. I don’t think the two will ever be able to merge—there’s the simple fact of geography, all that ocean between them—but I am happy enough, and wouldn’t trade it. I think, overall, it’s made for a full and interesting life.

As for what makes me feel like an outsider, there are lots of little things, and some big. Perhaps the biggest thing in Tunisia is language; while I understand Arabic fluently, I am shy about speaking, and as someone whose whole livelihood comes from words this is particularly challenging for me. I’m unable to express myself at the level I hold myself to in English. In the United States, my outsider status comes down to race and religion. I grew up in post-9/11 America, and so never felt fully embraced as American because I was Arab and Muslim. Those tensions are heightened now, with the recent presidential election and conversations about travel bans and registries.

Gaamangwe: I can’t imagine what that is like. To navigate the America of post 9/11 and post Trump as an Arab, Muslim and a woman must be very difficult. What do you want to illuminate about existing in the space you exists in, as these three forms of identity?

Leila: It’s a very strange time. In the months following the election, I sunk into a period of real mourning; I felt lost, adrift. I couldn’t focus. I was here in Provincetown, and had been working feverishly on my first book manuscript until that point, but the election derailed me for a good while. I hadn’t anticipated him winning, and so was thrown into a panic when he did. It took some time for me to process—I read only Arab poetry for the month following and struggled to write anything myself—and I was frustrated that I was unable to make progress on my manuscript. I realize now that I was growing and learning during that time (any time reading is time well spent), but also that self-care is part of progress, a necessary part. And during those bleak winter months, I felt so angry and trapped and erased that I felt I had to do something; I ended up putting together another manuscript, Tunsiya Amrikiya, a chapbook about being Tunisian and American and growing up Muslim and female in both contexts, and I found out recently it will be published by Bull City Press! So something good did come out of that time, as hopeless as it seemed to me.

Gaamangwe: I think a lot about this attempt to erase other people. I am always wondering where this much anger and hate towards other people stems from. Why the world keeps on insisting on “erasing” whole people, and countries, and cultures. And how also, someone can actually have that much power to be able to affect the lives of million people, and have the whole world watch by. How did we create such a world?

It’s wonderful that you will be published by Bull City Press. What meanings came up in Tunsiya Amrikiya?

Leila: I think that the answer to that is very long and very complicated and I don’t believe I have it. I do think there is a lot of hate and rage in the world, so much of it I have to regulate the amount of time I spend on the internet for my own emotional well-being. It’s disheartening, to say the least. I do try to wrestle with it often, both personally and in my work, and a fair number of poems from Tunsiya Amrikiya deal with violence and bigotry. But the manuscript is also celebratory; I wanted it to be a cry, of joy and pain, resisting erasure. I refuse to be silenced.

Gaamangwe: That’s true, we must keep resisting erasure. Find and create our own acts of defiance. Speak for ourselves and for those who can’t speak for themselves. But also, balance the dark with light, so yes to joy and celebration. The speakers in your poetry explore love; what are they discovering about it, and what does love mean to them?

Leila: I won’t be shy—the speaker is almost always myself, so I’ll speak to what love means to me. I believe, of course, that the world would benefit from more love. Though I write often about desire, I’m interested, too, in love outside of a romantic or sexual context, love that exists in small, brief ways and love that endures or resists definition. I once thought that love was responsible for a great deal of suffering (love of one’s country or God or race used as justification for violence, love of the self with disregard for all others), but I recognize those things weren’t rooted in love at all and are instead distortions, powerful feelings mistaken for love. Love is a gift. I’ll pursue it always.

Gaamangwe: Wonderful Leila! I totally agree. Thank you, and all the best of luck with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

 

Dialogues

The Politics of Identity and Belonging: A Dialogue With JJ Bola

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JJ Bola is a Kinshasa born, London raised writer, poet, and educator.  He has published three books of poetry Elevate (2012) and Daughter of the Sun (2014). His third, WORD (2015) is his most comprehensive poetry collection.

His debut novel No Place to Call Home (OWN IT, 2017) will be out this June. He is an MA Creative Writing student (Kit de Waal Scholar), Birkbeck, University of London (2017) and Spread the Word Flight 1000 Associate (2017).

JJ Bola’s work is centered on a narrative of empowerment, humanization, healing of trauma as well as discovery of self through art, literature and poetry. Creating the increasingly popular adage, ‘hype your writers like you do you rappers’, he believes that the true purpose of poetry (art) is to expose the reality of this world and how to, most importantly, survive it.

JJ Bola reads regularly at shows and festivals across London/UK such as  Tongue Fu, Vocals & Verses, Chill Pill, The Round House, Ventnor Fringe, Glastonbury etc as well as Universities; SOAS, UCL, Oxford, Lincoln, University of Birmingham, and a mini tour of the US West Coast in 2015/16, LA, Da Poetry Lounge, UCLA, Stanford University and Merrit College in the Bay Area, San Francisco and Oakland, where he won the Oakland Poetry Slam.

This conversation took place in a green sweet-spot in the cold city of  Gaborone, Botswana  and cold, wet, rainy London over a cup of tea by Skype.

Gaamangwe: JJ in an interview with Electric magazine, you said  “Our existence is political”, which I think is a powerful statement.  How has this statement been true for you? 

JJ: Here, the statement “our existence is political” is essentially an observation of how we as human beings fit the society that we are born into, in the world. We often only consider politics in terms of political parties or when it comes to voting and not necessarily; what schools we decide to send our children to, what areas we grow up in, what languages we learn or what music we listen to, but all of these are political decisions and we are influenced by that.

This has been true for me when I reflect on my own experiences in life.  Coming into the UK as a refugee, immediately from a young age, I was made aware that to be a refugee and not have status in a country or society that required you to have legal status, means that your existence is political. But also when you do get that status, that is also a political existence. There are a lot of political elements that exists that really sum up the reality of our day to day lives.

Gaamangwe: How has being a refugee throughout your lifetime influenced the experiences that you have experienced?

JJ: From as far as when I was in school, I was always aware that I had a different reality compared to my friends around me and those who weren’t refugees because of the kind of access that I had to certain spaces or certain opportunities.

So when kids talked about where they went for holidays on the summer or when it came to applying for certain opportunities to do with education, I was aware of the fact that I didn’t have a passport or status. This meant that I was restricted from access to a lot of thing. There was also how I felt; you are always reminded that you are on the outside, you’re always on the periphery and that you kind of carry that wherever you go. You carry that burden in so many other spaces beyond whether you are a refugee or not. It happens in so many other spaces and you’re a lot more aware and conscious of the politics of the world.

I remember being aware of the politics of the world at a young and these weren’t things that my friends at school were particularly concerned about. You look at the direction the world goes in, more so recently in the past few years’ people have been talking about a refugee crisis but for refugees around the world, there has always been a refugee crisis. To be a refugee is to exist in a state of crisis all the time because you’re not offered security. So that is really kind of the impact that it had on my life, my family around me and also the community that I grew up in, many of whom were also refuges.

Gaamangwe: How did you navigate living in that space where you are never sure what tomorrow is going to be like?

JJ: I just kind of followed my parent’s examples if I’m being honest. I am really fortunate because I think my parents had a really optimistic kind of approach. They instilled the ethics of  hard work in us, as a lot of immigrant and refugee parents do. They tell their children to work hard, be hopeful and optimistic for the future and that’s what we did. We never defined ourselves by our refugee status or by our political status. We were always aspiring and aiming to achieve our aspirations, our dreams and hopes. All of those things are things that went beyond any kind of label or stigma about being a refugee. We saw ourselves as human beings with value that we can add to the world and that is all that we were really trying to do.

Gaamangwe: Being a refugee means in some way you belong to different places and cultures. Do you identify as British-Congolese or just British or just Congolese?

JJ: That’s a really great question. It’s interesting because I don’t necessarily identify as British. I grew up in London so I identify more as a Londoner that I do as British. Obviously there are places and times when I leave the UK or depending on where I am, where people say “oh you’re British”, so it’s something I have to navigate around. I also identify with my Congolese heritage through my parents and my family back home but often times, politically I am not necessarily allowed to identify with being fully Congolese.

I am not given certain access because of the politics of being a child of the diaspora, you are always kind of removed from your country of origin because the question of authenticity comes into place. How authentic Congolese are you or how much do you belong to that house when you don’t live in it, is often the question or the conflict. I think it’s important to acknowledge the root or the origin of where you’re from but also allow yourself to have the fluidity of being able to belong in different spaces at different times because as human beings we do occupy more than one space at one time. We are fluid in our identity, we are fluid in the way we see ourselves, we are not fixed at all. So I am able to belong to many spaces at the same time and also to no space at all. I think this are  some of the conflicts that come with belonging and being human.

Gaamangwe: I completely understand the complexity of this, especially because we live in a world that insists on labels and ideas of belongings that is tied to one country.  

For me, it is very simple; I am in Botswana, I’m from Botswana and I have lived my entire life here, so questions of identity and belonging are easy for me. Because I belong and understand the nuances of what is it to be a motswana. I am also able to navigate my world and sense of identity easily.

How does having two influences, two cultures and two countries influence the kind of human that you are?

JJ: It is really interesting. For example, one of my cousins back home, we are about the same age, and we have pretty much had similar education experience but he lives in Kinshasa, he was born in Kinshasa, grew up in Kinshasa and never left Kinshasa. Although I was born in Kinshasa, I grew up in London and schooled in London.

For my cousin, he is Congolese and he doesn’t have the conflict whether or not he is Congolese or any of the concerns of being influenced of multiple cultures. His identity is rooted in his congolese identity. But he watches the Kardashian’s and all these reality TV shows and he knows very little about Congolese history, culture, politics, the different cultural groups and so forth. And on the other hand, I know way more about Congolese history, culture and politics because I have been passionate about researching about Congo.

So when we have a conversation, he sounds like the foreigner,  because he is talking about mainstream TV, all these reality show and social media and I’m talking about our culture and our traditions. So, you have to ask yourself who is more Congolese in that situation?  If I didn’t give the location of where each person was, and I just said person A speaks about mainstream culture  and person B speaks about the culture of the country, which person do you think is from this country? People are more likely to say person B is from that country because we often tie our identity to culture, arts, history, and people who have that information or passion are seen as being more authentically from that country or from that place. So it’s always a really interesting dynamic, this idea of how authentic or the authenticity of being from where someone is from. What does that truly mean because when you take my cousin, he has never had to question that because no has ever questioned him on whether he is truly Congolese because he is physically there. Is it enough to be physically present yet be mentally or even spiritually absent? I am not saying he is absent in that way but where do these rules about authenticity come from and when do we ever come from just one place?  Especially when I am looking at Congo, a lot of Congo is defined by colonial borders and again that’s the number one conflict that I have when it comes to nationality and what we are tying ourselves into. It’s a conversation, I don’t know if I I’m presenting the answer, I’m just saying this is the question that leads to more questions.

Gaamangwe: Yes, I also have a lot of questions. How do we define citizenship?  how do we define belonging to a certain country? how do we even define countries? I don’t think it’s as simple as we always want to make it seem, it’s more complex than that.

I realized that there is probably a person who is outside Botswana who knows more about Botswana than I do. I also had an experience where I moved to India and I knew so much more about India because when you feel like you don’t know something you are propelled to do a lot of research and consciously experience that place as compared to someone who is there and takes it more lightly. There is so much gratitude and awareness when you are outside something.

JJ: Definitely, I remember this experience I had that led me to be passionate and aware of  the culture of my origin. This one time a white guy somewhere randomly asked me what country I was from and I was a teenager at that time and this was just after Congo had been named back to Congo, after it was Zaire, so this is a few years after Mobutu’s exile. I said I am from Zaire, because as far as I knew my country was still called Zaire. He said Zaire doesn’t exists, it’s Congo now and he said how could you not know and he went on to tell me about my own country. This guy who was not from my country talked about the history, politics and I was learning so much but I felt a deep sense of embarrassment because there was this complete outsider who knew way more about where I was from and I didn’t even have anything to offer to him as new information. So that really set a deep conflict and I was embarrassed by it,  and so I thought it’s really important to learn. Obviously no one can know everything about where they come from but at least you should be able to offer a certain amount of principles.

Gaamangwe: Definitely. I imagine that you didn’t leave Congo under good circumstances. How did you live with that kind of wound and betrayal from your country of origin?

JJ: Even still now as an adult I can still feel the way I felt when we had to leave. It happened in a way that it was a surprise. Your parents have to make a decision to leave, so they leave a place where they have their lives and where they are surrounded by their family. They make a decision and that’s that but there is no consultation process or any preparation. They barely have enough time to even really pack anything. It’s a really difficult thing especially as a child. So we are looking at issues of attachment, belonging and abandonment. You are taken from a place that you have always lived to a completely new place in a different environment and you are treated differently. It can be a shock to the system. But we were quite lucky  because  London is quite cultural, so all the time there were other people from our country that we were able to connect with here. It’s really important to have that sense of community as well because the community allows you to find yourself, to always recreate where you come from. But it’s really difficult because even now in my adulthood, I realize that there are something that I still take with me. Constantly travelling and moving from place to place, feeling of attachment or dis-attachment and not completely ever feeling settled in one place because you always have to be prepared to leave just in case. That’s always in the back of my mind.  I am always prepared to leave just in case. I guess that’s a symptom of the experience that we have had as a family or that I have had as an individual. But on the flip side, it’s also made me a lot more resilient and given me a lot of strength and determination because seeing what my parents and my community have been able to go through, how they have been able to achieve in spite of the odds really makes me believe there is so much more that I can do and that we can do. Leaving to go to a new country where you don’t know the culture, you don’t know the language, you’re not aware of the systems and you’re poor and still be able to establish yourself and start a life even if it’s just holding down an ordinary job, that’s still a massive achievement. That is something that still does give me hope.

Gaamangwe: That’s inspiring. In your own personal reality, what is the story of Congo?

JJ: For me, Congo is the land of my ancestors. It’s a place that connects me back to myself and reminds me of how small I really am. Those times when I start to sink in my own ego and I see the world as only me, I think and connect back to Congo and I am reminded that there is generations and generations that came before and make up who I am today. It’s like connecting the roots to the tree, it’s always good to remember that you don’t stand alone and that you are connected to other people and also the people where you come from. My being away from home and my country and being part of the diaspora doesn’t mean that I am separated or cut off, it’s just like a branch from the tree but we all have the same root. It definitely reminds me that I am always connected to something that is bigger than just me.

Gaamangwe: That’s powerful. Have you ever gone back to Congo?

JJ: I have been back once in 2014. It was so powerful. I have my extended family that I have only ever been able to see through pictures and only ever been able to speak to on the phone, so being able to hear their voices and see them face to face was such an incredible experience. It opened me up to a part of myself that I wasn’t aware of. To be able to travel outside of the city into the village and connect with my grandparents side of the family, was a deeply, humbling experience. I think it was very spiritual. I would say there was a deep peace that settled in my soul when I went back home in the sense that there was something I was looking for that I didn’t know I was looking for. It definitely answered a lot of questions that I had and it also gave me a vision of myself, in terms of where I can be and what I can speak about in the future. It gave me new language to be able to articulate my reality, and I think that was probably one of the most important things.

Gaamangwe: How do you articulate your reality now especially when you think of it in connection to Congo?

JJ: For me, I have a lot of admiration and reverence for my reality. For who I am as a person, for the journey that I have come from not just as an individual but in terms of the connection that I have with people who come from where I come from. Often times we are conditioned to feel shame about being from Congo and Africa, especially in the diaspora. It really allowed me to connect back and see myself because  while other people are still looking for themselves and the world is still looking for itself, I was connected to something that was already there and visible. Right now people are trying to find ways to define themselves, ways to define their culture, so  being able to go back home and connect with my culture allowed me to  see myself and also see those around me. I was able to now speak about Congo, being back home and give examples of the way things are going that are much more concrete and solid than just what I read in books. A book can prepare you for so much but the reality to be able to see it, live it and breath it is just way more powerful. So this experience was really empowering as it allowed me to speak of myself and my reality in a way that I was never able to before.

Gaamangwe: That’s incredible. So you wrote a book exploring most of the things that we are talking about— the idea of home and belonging— called “No Place to Call Home”. Can you tell me more about this book?

JJ: No Place to Call Home looks at the journey of a family that comes from Congo to the UK to seek asylum as refugees. It tells a story from two perspectives, the parents (the father) and the children (mainly the young son).  Essentially from the parents trying to protect their children, trying to integrate their children into the new society and protect them from the reality of their political experience. But also the children are trying to understand about their reality, where they come from and what they are going through and some of the conflicts that this can bring. It also looks at the parents lives before  they decided to leave the country and have the children; how life was like then, what their dreams and aspirations were, what was lost when they were forced to leave and what was the circumstances that actually forced them to leave in the end. So it tackles the questions of belonging and identity, and this feeling of places and how there isn’t a place for you but also how communities come to form themselves away from the places they feel they belong to and how they survive in different spaces and some of the issues and interactions that go around that. It’s really like getting magnifying glass and going to a community who aren’t really spoken about on focused on a lot.

Gaamangwe: Was it very cathartic to write this book because it seems that you were inspired by your own personal experience?  Was it also a bit difficult for you to go into the depth of your own experience and translate that into the characters of the story in the book?

JJ: It was definitely both. It was cathartic in the sense that there were things that I hadn’t had to think about since I was a child. Some of the things that were long left behind that I didn’t need to address in my adulthood, a lot of it came back to me and I was able to see some of the experiences that we had and it was a release. There was also a lot of the issues and burdens that we still carry as adults and trying to navigate around that.

I feel much lighter and clearer after writing it and I hope that those who read it and have gone through similar experiences will be able to relate but also those who haven’t gone through this experience at all will also be able to relate because I think it’s part of the human story, it’s part of the everyday experience that we all feel no matter where you are from. I think we all feel this idea of places and this feeling of questioning our identity.

When you’re refugee it’s more of an immediate question, it’s something that comes sooner to you because of you status at the moment . But it doesn’t mean that it’s not an a question that doesn’t arrive at all for a lot of us.  At some point or another in our lives we question who we are, who we think we are and how others see us and how we see ourselves.

Gaamangwe: The idea of places and belonging is a huge part of the human experience. There is a sense that not all of us fit places entirely nor feel a sense of belonging entirely, at all times. I look forward to engaging further with these questions and realizations in your book and possibly process my own experiences. Thank you for joining me in this space.

Gaamangwe Joy Mogami is a writer, filmmaker and founder of Africa in Dialogue. She is the curator of Brunel International African Poetry Prize Interviews With Africa in Dialogue.

 

 

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlist: A Dialogue With Kechi Nomu

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Kechi-Nomu

Kechi Nomu was born in 1987. She grew up in Nigeria under two Nigerian dictatorships. Her poems have appeared in Saraba Magazine, The ANA Poetry Review, Expound Magazine, Sentinel and Brittle Paper. She writes film and theatre reviews for Olisatv. Her short stories have been workshopped at the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop and the Caine Prize Short Story Surgery. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared online and in print.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the busy hub of Yaba in Lagos, Nigeria by Email.

Gaamangwe: Kechi, congratulations on being shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize. What does it mean for you to be on the shortlist?

Kechi: I am still processing all of what it means, but gratitude is the clearest emotion. The news came at a time when I had a lot of questions. So, it felt like an answer on some level. It is also just stunning to me to be on a shortlist with poets whose works I greatly admire, for the Brunel!

Gaamangwe: What kind of questions are you exploring in your poetry?

Kechi: I am very interested in memory. In the ways that this works for the individual and for people connected to a place (country and community) who have shared history. How certain events move from the center to the fringe of a larger consciousness but may remain very present for some people. Particularly in the ways that these things touched their lives. I was talking to a poet friend about this exact same thing days ago because well, it just is something I’m very preoccupied with.

The ways that a glitch in the day can mean so many different things in a place like Nigeria where things like memory and nostalgia—just the right to say that this happened in my small corner and this is what it means or continues to mean for me—can feel like such a luxury and in some cases, such a contested thing. In my writing, I try to reclaim a space to say these are the things I know that don’t fit into the general story and yes, they happened.

Gaamangwe: I am also obsessed with memory, specifically the collective unconsciousness of our ancestors, and how that affects our lives now. Latent memory. Which specific memories are you exploring?

Kechi: Wow. I had to sit with the thought of ‘the collective unconsciousness of our ancestors’ for some time. The weight of what remains untouched just stared me in the face. It is so important that you do this.

For me, you know, I am never sure what memories want to be told or explored. It is just the ways that memories spill out of places where a lot of effort has been put into containing them. But I am interested in selves or people set up to function outside of the memory of what they have lived and how this effort to contain/shut their memories fail. When a country for instance tries to negate memory with nationalistic slogans and the lid keeps coming undone or does not fit properly and there is a bubbling over. I think in this way, poetry functions as a collector. These are the things I think of.

Gaamangwe: That kind of nationalistic forced amnesia is disturbing. Because a lot of violence is performed within this space, where there is the expectation that people will forget. But memory doesn’t work like that, even when you think you have contained it, most time it’s seeping in unconsciously in daily events. This got me thinking about the memories in my country that we’ve been forced to forget, and also wondering, what memories in your country and personal space have been negated?

Kechi: Very true. I couldn’t agree more. Memory is very autonomous. It belongs solely to the individual. In Nigeria, there is just a lot that has been negated by this collective silence and denial. This, even in the face of the work done, currently being done, to write these memories into being. In our contemporary history, there has been a civil war, there have been dictatorships each with its own specific brand of trauma. In the last decade, terror has had an incalculable effect and there has been a denial narrative consistently put out by the state. Such that, in the face of the relentlessness of this denial narrative, to be sentient, to remember, to claim memory, the ones that space is made for in the larger conversation and the ones that seem not to matter in mapping the big stories, becomes a radical thing.

Gaamangwe: At this point in human history, we really need to be radical. Because accepting these denial narratives is a very dangerous space where our existence is made to be insignificant. Which we cannot and should not have. How are you, and the speakers in your poetry becoming radical?

Kechi: The people in my poems, the poems I have been feeling my way through for a while now (as the poems I sent in for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize reflect) are wondering what love means, what it is worth when the object of love becomes a thing that is dangerous. How do boys love/long for fathers who want to consume them? How do men for whom the love of country/ideas of duty/honor/responsibility/expectation, return when the systems they have given themselves to fail them, what do they return to. How do girls love fathers whose memories they want to discard as much as they want to claim parts of them? How do children love mothers who make memory by the erasure of self, for whom this is what the equation of love looks like. How do people love places that turn on them? How do they carry the memory of these places across geographies, or for people who cannot afford physical distance, across time?

For the speakers in my poems, it is looking at a beast from angles that are familiar. Processing from these points that are true. Claiming the right to start from the confusion of what you are and then working your way to some kind of question.

Gaamangwe: These are really powerful angles of looking at love, especially love that walks on a tightrope. What are you and the speakers discovering about love? What meanings and understandings are you and they making about love?

Kechi: You know, I wish I could say that we have begun to make discoveries for certain, things we can frame with language just yet. It does feel like we are on the road to understanding… there is a way that Toni Morrison frames it that makes sense to me and seems to fit where it is that we are and what it is that we are working through.

There is really nothing more to say – except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

It’s from The Bluest Eye I think. Not very sure now. But, you know, I think to arrive at some point of discovery or meaning, I and the ‘people’ that inhabit me are feeling our way through the ‘how’.

Gaamangwe: This speaks to me, Kechi. Thank you, and all the best with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

 

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlists: A Dialogue With Nick Makoha

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Poet Nick Makoha is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and a Fellow of The Complete Works in the UK. He won the 2015 Brunel African Poetry Prize and the Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize 2016 for his manuscript Resurrection Man. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Rialto, The Triquarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Wasafiri. Find him at www.nickmakoha.com

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the cosmopolitan, busy city of London by Skype.

Gaamangwe: Nick, congratulations for being on the Brunel International African Poetry Prize shortlist. What does it mean for you to be shortlisted?

Nick: It means everything. I think there is a lot of work that goes in with writers behind the scenes, improving your craft, reading, workshops. So, it is always nice when there is an opportunity to show what you have been working on inside of your creative space and inside of your mind. Particularly the Brunel Prize because it does two things; it shows you a lot of good African writers, and it shows you where they are because they are all over the world. For me, it is an important way of engaging with a wider African literary community. This will probably be my last time to apply because my book is coming out soon but I have enjoyed the process and it has helped me to develop as a writer by just applying for this award.

Gaamangwe: You have won the prize before, so what inspired the collection that you selected for this entry?

Nick: It’s a body of work that I have been working on for a long time. I have probably been writing all my poems for probably the last five to seven years. I have been looking at the 1971-1979’s Idi Amin regime and I was looking at how to bring to life that moment of history, which in many people’s minds is almost a caricature of all the work or poems that have to do with that time. I didn’t start out that way intentionally; I wrote one poem which was actually about my cousin who used to live in Kenya and has now died but from that poem, poems about my life and Uganda started to drip through and I had to pay attention to that. That is pretty much how it worked and the way I work is that I focus intently on something. It took me a while to kind of get my confidence. I didn’t want to write things that I had heard before or how other people might write about war, so I really tried to find an original way of suggesting something that people already know. Everyone knows about some kind of war and everyone thinks they know about Africa and I was like; ‘’How do I open a conversation about war in a particular area of Africa that makes it seem necessary?”

Gaamangwe:  Besides illuminating the history of Uganda and the events that happened during the Idi Amin period, what do you hope you could illuminate further? This original angle, where is it leaning towards?

Nick: You always start something by digging at the roots, because you are as strong as the roots. What I want people to do is not just looks at my work but look at Uganda in general and not just glance it over. I feel East Africa has a lot to add to the creative economy, so I am hoping that my work will be one of several works that will emerge as originating from East Africa because the story is from Uganda. I am hoping that my work will be one of several stories that will show this place called Africa, this place East Africa, this place called Uganda and encourage people to find out more. I also hope this will encourage writers both native and in the diaspora to say “I’ve got a story to tell and I’ve got an interesting way to tell it’’ in the way that other writers have been doing. Poetically Derek Walcott did that for me, the way he spoke about the Caribbean made me confident to speak about my home land because even though I am not in my home land I still relate to it as home. I believe that we have an interesting literature and interesting stories which need to be told from that space. So what I am hoping is new is that people learn more about Uganda beyond the existing narrative of Idi Amin. Most times people forget that there were people affected by what happened because of Idi Amin. I took my wife to Uganda and she said to me, “Wow these people are really friendly and they are warm. I like this place”. If all you have for reference about Uganda is Idi Amin, then you have this one image that is overtaking the true image of Uganda. I hope the reader can see that there is much more to Uganda than her history.

Gaamangwe: So Candidate A is Idi Amin, right?

Nick: Yes, A for Amin. I wanted to highlight that people forget that he was selected. The British colonials wanted him in power and they thought he could be their puppet. On one level we look at it and say “Oh Idi Amin was so horrible” which he was, but we also have to ask and understand who put him in power and who gave him access to that power. A lot of the time you can just subscribe the blame to Africa and its dictators but we have to think and ask: what is the climate that allows that to happen repeatedly? What is the gain of the west in allowing dictators to destroy a perfectly running economy and then come in when it is almost destroyed and say we will help you?

Gaamangwe: I do wonder about what could have possibly stopped him?

Nick: The reality is that Idi Amin was a very menacing character but he wasn’t the only villain. We were up against a lot.  There was the colonial regime, where when it was told to leave after independence it didn’t want to leave. So it stayed and put their own puppets in power. There was a game that was being played and it was very strategic with the power of the people. There had a wild man acting as their puppet, and that enabled him to do all the damage he did.  He destroyed the economy and created havoc countrywide. And also made it difficult to reclaim our country.

I don’t think they realised how gruesome he would be, they thought that he had no brains. He had some brains, and this insatiable need for power. The thing to also understand, is that while we were being colonized they removed us from power and from the decisions affecting our country.

So when you place anyone in there, it is a drunk sense of power. I am not saying what he did was right but it was a dangerous position to put just one man in it. It needs people who can hold the man in power to account. You have to ask yourself why didn’t the colonials intervene sooner? Why did they allow that to happen?  They still allow this to happen, Uganda is not the only place where this has happened. It is something they have done before and something they will do again and that is my biggest concern.

Gaamangwe: I understand the yearning for power and how that drove a lot of the activities that happened during that time but I am disturbed by the kind of mind he had.

Nick: I think any person is capable of extreme good and extreme bad and evil. It’s like making a soup, you add certain ingredients to the pot and it will taste a certain way and if you add too much it will taste a certain way. What you have to understand is that the conditions allowed for a person such as Idi Amin to become a dictator. I don’t think he woke up and said “Hey I am going to be dictator”. I believe there were many factors that aligned themselves that allowed him to make choices. The choices that he and others made led to the constant spiral of events that happened.

These choices are what made Uganda what it is and many decisions were made that we have to think about responsibly when placed in that position. There was paranoia, world agendas and tribal agendas (Uganda became about tribal feuds as opposed to our differences bringing us together). There were many factors, we can’t just look at Idi Amin as this one entity of evil against this beautiful country. That is what I hope the poems and the book intends to look at.

Gaamangwe: How are you and other Ugandans trying to un-occupy this history?

NIck: For me, I have turned it into art.  Because art is a way of looking at beautiful and horrific things in the world. The way that we get over it is by allowing ourselves to look at it as opposed to what we do in most times of trauma; avoiding, suppressing or denying. What I am hoping for is we can learn it from looking at this.  We can have a discourse, and hopefully transformation and eventually change. We also can’t forget our pasts because part of the error that we keep making is because we forget our pasts. The past is not meant to be remembered with judgment, it is to be remembered as learning tool, as a guide, as a way of understanding people.

As for Ugandans, I can’t speak for them but I hope there has been change.  We as a nation are moving on and I think only time can answer; what is life for Ugandans right now, what space do we occupy in the world consciousness, what is the life of a typical boy or girl in Uganda, and what are the prospects for prosperity in Uganda. If there are green ticks in those areas then we can say that we are moving on. What I want as anyone would want for their country is that my country be a player in the world economy, I want my country to be the one where the native Ugandans are thriving, for me as an artist to thrive artistically, in business and science and within families. That we are not a nation that is just persecuted by war. That for me would be the measures of success.

Gaamangwe: For Ugandans and other black people we have been persecuted a lot for the bodies that we inhabit and for the lands that we inhabit these bodies in. You explore this in the “Black Death” poem. I wonder if it’s also in the same stream of line about Idi Amin or it was a different theme all together?

Nick:  Although it’s parallel with Black Lives Matter, “Black Death” is still about Uganda. A lot of times when we focus on war, we focus on the opposing powers – that this country is fighting against this country, this tribe against that tribe and this party against that party. What I was interested in with this poem is that while people are discussing the rights and wrongs of what they believe, they are leaving behind the bodies.  I wanted to look at how bodies were affected. The poem focuses on the loss of life and the value of life, and hopefully it shows the value of black lives. Sometimes when we talk about dictators in African countries, we don’t realise the loss of life and what that means. So the poem hopefully shows the value of the black body.

Gaamangwe: This is true. We need to look more on how lives are lost and altered forever. I think the work that you are creating with this collection is very important.

Nick: Thank you, I appreciate that. I hope this collection also encourages other artists to look at their countries in Africa and to write stories about them because that is important. Otherwise our stories will always be told by other people. One of the things that Kwame Dawes brought to my attention is that; “The most interesting story right now is the African story” and that has many shapes. So we need to claim that and write the Africans version of things. We also can and have to participate and contribute to the world dialogue, with our point of view in its different forms.

Gaamangwe: That’s the exact reason why I do Africa in Dialogue!  Thank you Nick, and all the best of luck with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

Dialogues

Re-Imagining Culture: A Dialogue With Caroline Anande Uliwa

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Caroline Anande Uliwa is a Culture Journalist, Poet & Singer from Tanzania. She has been working in print media in the country since 2008, when she was opportune enough to run a column in a weekly newspaper, ‘The eXpress’ titled I am an African. To date she has worked for the National newspaper as a features reporter, in Flare Magazine as Assistance Editor and as a contributing writer in Lucky, The Bold & Bang magazine, plus as a columnist in The Citizen Newspaper in their Saturday insert magazine ‘Woman’.

She’s currently running her own blog titled ‘MKEKA,’ as well being a contributing writer in the ‘Magazine’ inside The East African Newspaper (distributed in Kenya, Uganda, Kenya & Rwanda).

As a Poet, she has been the Chair & co-founder of a burgeoning Poetry Club called WAKA, which in 2015 worked with Badilisha Poetry (The biggest online archive of African Poets). To amass over 40 Tanzanian poets works for their website. 

As a Singer her debut was in Tusker Project Fame the East African iconic singing competition, here in 2009 she attained the 11th position (2nd in Tanzania). Since then she’s performed in South Africa, curtain raised for Oliver Mtukuduzi at ‘The East African Vibes Concert’ & mostly she’s worked in local live bands in Dar es Salaam. With seasoned musicians from her country like guitarist Norman Bikaka, sax player Rashid Pembe, percussionist Twaba Mohammed & Kauzeni Lyamba as well base guitarists Bakuza Moshi & Leonard Kayoya.  

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the Soma Book Cafe in the chilly, rainy city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania by Skype.

Gaamangwe: Caroline, you are a cultural journalist, which absolutely sounds cool and interesting. Which aspects of culture do you explore in your job,  and why was it important for you to explore culture?

Caroline: It happened quite organically, growing up I was always drawn to fiction. When I returned home from college, at my first job working with a Journalist & Communications expert, she hooked me up to an editor at The eXpress Newspaper. A weekly English paper in the country. Through that the editor, I got to start writing a column titled “I am an African”. It’s here that I started to sink on the surface of culture journalism.

I wrote on the topic to affirm my being an African. As most of the fiction and literature I had read till then, was on foreign cultures mostly from the west. The column was my ‘pop’ attempt to uncover more of our own stories/heritage. Starting with the little things; how we make our hair, how we eat our food, where we sit when we are eating, how people talk with their accents etc.  

To date I am drawn to sharing on this inner journey of the African persona, his/her emerging culture particularly the Afropolitan emerging sphere, which showcases our interaction from domestic norms which for the majority are from tribal environments to the globalized context in Africa today. I see then that this ‘Afropolitan’ description is still an embryo which requires stronger voices from African perspectives.

Gaamangwe:  The “I am an African” column is so important, because modern Africa knows far too little about her history and culture. Hopefully, the emergence of the “Afropolitan” culture is here to dismantle this. What does it mean for you to be “Afropolitan”? Where do you think we are going with this “Afropolitan” culture?

Caroline: I find that the Afropolitan culture is being forged strongly in the cities of Africa then trickling down to the rural areas. Though of course this varies from country & region to region. It’s in the city that a lot of diversity meets. A year or so back I was at an art exhibition ‘Impose/Expose’, with Tanzanian sculptress Safina Kimbokota. Herein she showcased a metal plate wind chime. She said the clash of the metal plates were indicative of the clash of traditions and norms that occurs in the city, forcing a new culture, in my eye the ‘Afropolitan’ culture.

Personally I am very interested to inform on it, this drive is empowered by my noticing that it’s endangered in maintaining its authentic African emblems. Due to the heavy influence of globalisation, which on this continent is felt triple, what with our past of colonisation, slavery etc. So now you have our popular music with a heavy western influence, the South America’s telenovela’s prevalent in our local TV’s. Not to mention our publishing industry faces stiff competition (economies of scale) from the west, with our own low standards of living that make buying a book for many a luxury.

This battle is then to amplify the voice of the native african footprint in the equation of ‘Afropolitan’ culture. Noticing how Afropolitan in Kenya is not the same as Afropolitan in Mozambique for example; is what I foresee my life work being anchored on. 

Gaamangwe:  One thing I am seeing with the emergence of “Afropolitan” is a lot of our culture seeping in our creativity. Our literature, music, fashion  is becoming more Afrocentric.

It is empowering that no matter how much we have been influenced by the outside western world and colonialism, nothing can remove the aspects of us that is rooted in being African. Our essence is still integrated in our Africanness.

Caroline: Very true, there is hope for sure. Even for individuals like myself who don’t speak their native tongues (my parents speak two different native languages & I grew up in the city where Kiswahili is spoken). The ancestors still have a latch on us, not just in our DNA but in our ghost african accents, our mannerisms, how we eat our food, how we raise & discipline our children and how we respect our elders.

I recently interviewed a young jewelry maker Sekela Nyange of KusKus Jewellery, I was  fascinated that even though most of her raw materials come from China. Her designs are so intrinsically African with notes from the Maasai culture, tapes from the Nubian choker necklaces, not to mention her play with bold colors that can be seen in various tribes from the Ndebele in their homes to our ‘vitenge’ fabrics. This tells me there is still a beautiful thread that we ought to be proud of and expose more boldly.

So yes there’s a brave resilience of our essence budding, it’s there in our bold african prints, the thrive of new natural hair movements, the joyous music genres that have more of african beats like Kwaito & Nigerian pop music. 

Of course I think we have to dig deeper because there are so many norms and traditions of Africa that are positive & being left to the wayside. For instance in Tanzania there are music instruments like the Zeze, Irimba, the Makonde Drums, that have fewer and fewer of the younger generation learning to play them.

I’m moved to look into the past, pick the thorns from the gold and amplify the jewels of our traditions, inviting all of us to forge a ‘new/today’ that is more authentically ours.

Gaamangwe: That new and braver reclamation of our heritage is surging all over. Women with their Black Girl Magic & Melanin Poppin hashtags; which is basically us appraising and encouraging ourselves to to be entirely okay with who we are, because we are magic just the way we are right?

Yes, the challenge  is we didn’t record a lot of things, so we are trying to get back to who we were with little information of how things were done back then. Also, globalization is really pressing hard, and sadly the majority of what has been promoted as Global, for a long time now, is not from our ways. It’s an interesting state to be in right now.

Caroline: It can get frustrating. Though once you’ve sniffed the pandora box of our histories, you can’t go back. There are times however when I wish I was oblivious, that I still thought wearing weaves every day was empowering and/or beautiful. That gorging on popular African music which has only 10% of our real essence, entertaining. As there is economic power backed to those who stick to this lane, I saw this connection clearly when I watched a documentary.

Aired at the Zanzibar Film Festival by John Antonelli, it highlighted the plight of the tribes like the Suri in Northern Kenya living around Turkana Lake. Their very livelihood is in danger due to the construction of the Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia on Omo River (the biggest water source for lake Turkana). Now you’d think there’d be an uproar from the East African public through mainstream media & or social media.

As our own people are being prosecuted with clear cases of land grabbing and environmental crimes. Yet the thing is, these people aren’t wearing normal clothes, many of their women still walk bare chested with gleaming brown skin covered in ground clay, an assortment of jewellery and leather skins for skirts.

It dawned on me that to the public they are not us but an ‘other’, a clear indication of the danger of the subliminal messages in our society. Propelling the themes of ‘heathens’ and such regressive perspectives.

Gaamangwe: The worst act done to the African human is the de-humanizing of African ways and realities. We have lost so much of our cultures and beliefs systems because time and again, we’ve been told they are barbaric and regressive.  And now we have adapted those perspectives as our own. Its absolutely sad.

Do you think that art can play a role in redefining, influencing and impacting  the way that we perceive our cultures?

Caroline: I think we have to recognize that art is the one profession that reminds humans we are creative beings. We don’t end at food, clothes & shelter; we enhance our food by cooking it with recipes (chefs), knowing how to best let it nourish us through nutritionists. We don’t just protect ourselves from the elements with clothes we also express ourselves through a fashion designer. We enjoy our environments better with architects and  interior designs, we connect to that intangible space of our spirits through music & literature (holy texts).  

Despite this in our third world economies in Africa, Art & Culture takes a back seat with stringent budget allocations and poor policy & laws to support their infrastructure.

I believe if our leaders were empowered with a modern ‘griot’. Hailing the pride of their histories, by stumbling into works from African storytellers in all genres of art. They would meet that intimidating space, filled with foreign tongues and etiquettes backed by financial prowess (that our ancestors through slavery, colonialism helped cement). Where they negotiate deals that affect all our lives, they’d be there with more confidence and therefore fight for us more diligently.

Instead of what is the case right now, where brave leaders like Thabo Mbeki release a report showcasing that Africa loses Billions of USD per annum. More so that what it gains through financial aid (illicit financial flows). Still we don’t see a unified cry from the continent demanding a stop to this modern slavery.

We instead have cases like in my own country where our Ministry of Culture in less than a year has seen two Ministers despite being in a serious bid to uphaul our ‘Art Policy’. With the current one Hon Dr Harrison Mwakyembe quoted publicly to say ‘musicians shouldn’t bother with integrating social political messages in their works…’??!!.

They have to see that art enhances culture and culture is our backbone. The foreign powers that have ravaged our continent for centuries knew this and so they always first aimed to undermine our culture (what with mentioning our way as ‘heathen’ ‘barbaric’ and sanctifying us with their religions). Before showing their fangs and severely regressing our progressive evolution.  

Gaamangwe:  Its absolutely maddening. The power of the artists in the average person’s life is far understated in Africa. Yet the artist reflect the things of the time as they see it. They mirror socio-economic, psychological and political state of human existence.  When you see, you can change. How can that be minimised? 

Caroline: I draw inspiration from persons before me who have persevered in even tougher times. Recently our own John Kitime, a musician and notable activist in the art circles of Tanzania. Took funds from his own pocket to interview and document views from various artists in the country so as to give our ministry of culture, a wholesome representation in their deliberations of tabling of our new ‘Art Policy’.

I know many such s/heroes like Demere Kitunga, Elieshi Lema of E&D Publishers, Carola Kinasha-Musician/Teacher. They pushed through despite the challenges. I think with this age of social media, the opportunity to create meaningful dialogue is present and it is being used. However the case is that of David & Goliath for as I said the capitalist powers that be, wouldn’t have it in their interests if we really knew our histories. As then perhaps we would demand reparations for all that has and continues to be embezzled out of this continent in ways of natural resources and low/unpaid labour.

Gaamangwe: This is sadly true. But yes, artists are fighting in the ways of rendering new spaces of interaction with our culture and heritage. You are one of those people who have created this new, empowering space by the way of WAKA Poetry. How are the artists who are coming for WAKA poetry sessions re-imagining culture? What are the dialogues that they opening up in the sessions?

Caroline: WAKA has certainly been a space where I’ve witnessed the re-imagining of culture. Through the monthly meetings and the interactions on social media mostly through our whatsapp group.  We attempt to strengthen our poetry and always end up giving each other food for thought in way of discussions and debates that arise from the poems.

Our dialogues here touch on gender roles, politics, humour, spiritual journeys. The nature of our meets nurture a safe space, we sit in a circle, we introduce ourselves at each session (kind of like AA).  So due to the personal nature of poetry & the environment we provide (thanks to SOMA book Cafe) many of our dialogues veer from the heart and the consequent osmosis of ideas, change our lives. This space has certainly enhanced mine.  

Gaamangwe: That is amazing, you’re doing a great job. On this vein of enhancing lives, you wrote a poem Fundamental Lessons of Four, on the lessons humanity needs to learn in order to enhance our lives. One stanza says;

“If the world were well-educated

they’d be no hunger.

As lesson namba mbili,

humans here are the smartest species

should translate least effort goes to survival”.

What was the source of this poem?

Caroline: My own journey as an artist has found me being uncomfortable with labels, noticing how they ultimately don’t really define me. This poem then walks on a spiritual vein, that speaks to what really unifies us in our ability to draw breath.

See despite many of us being religious, where we are taught to value life, see each other as brethren. In reality there is still a strong ‘other’ in our day to day. How else do you explain some of us going to the moon whilst millions starve to death.

I heard a woman say “We have to respect racism is a disease and should be treated as such, like someone suffering from alcoholism“

I think our systems have a disease of ‘inequalities’ stemming from our own decree of ‘other’. We have to bring awareness to it and perhaps that is where the role of the artist shines through. For me it has been art in the form of film, literature, fine art that has poked me to see we have more in common than not.

Gaamangwe: I agree with everything that you are saying. So as an artist how do you use your artistry to re-imagine culture?  And how would you like to contribute to this endless conversation that we are always having as human beings?

Caroline: I have to say meeting persons like yourself, who see the importance of telling authentic stories that forge our true evolution on the continent. Keeps me refreshed, inspired, for it can be lonely working with infrastructures that don’t yet recognise our presence as poets, culture journalists or afro-jazz/ spoken word artists.

I use my articles to allow my audiences to be better informed on the cultural resources of their own treasures here in Tanzania & to a less extent the rest of Africa. My music & poetry many times is my own therapy, though I don’t live in a bubble. So they’re an honest engagement with what bombards me. Somewhere in there I find I relate with various people, which I am grateful for.

I’d like to contribute to this endless conversation by continuing to grow in this work. Learning from those before me, where my prayer is to be so immersed in it that the universe doesn’t have a choice but to keep me sustained in it.

Gaamangwe Joy Mogami is a writer, filmmaker and founder of Africa in Dialogue. She is the curator of Brunel International African Poetry Prize Interviews With Africa in Dialogue.

Caroline Details:  @CarolAnande- Twitter @CarolAnande- Facebook  @CarolAnande- Instagram  Caroline Anande Uliwa- Youtube Website: carolanande.blogspot.com

 

 

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlist: A Dialogue With Yalie Kamara.

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Yalie Kamara is a first generation Sierra Leonean-American and native of Oakland, California. Prior to becoming an MFA candidate at Indiana University, she worked in the field of social justice specializing in educational access and arts facilitation. She holds Bachelors of Arts degrees in Languages and Creative Writing from University of California, Riverside and a Masters of Arts degree in French from Middlebury College. Yalie’s writing has appeared in Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Entropy Mag, and Amazon: Day One. Her forthcoming chapbook, When The Living Sing, will be published by Ledge Mule Press in Spring, 2017.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the verdant, dewy, spring-soaked Bloomington in Indiana, USA by Skype.

Gaamangwe: Yalie, congratulations for being on the Brunel International African Poetry Prize shortlist. What does this mean to you?

Yalie: Firstly, it’s an immense honor to have been chosen to share the shortlist title with such a talented group of writers from Africa and beyond. There is such a striking diversity in the stories that we are rendering poetically. It feels affirming to know that there is space for me to share my experiences as a Sierra Leonean-American and that it is being regarded as a narrative worthy of both attention and encouragement.

Gaamangwe: What experiences are you interested in exploring with your poetry?

Yalie: I think my main obsession is exploring notions of home. I’m curious about the experiences that we have that make us feel included or excluded. This theme is recurrent in all of the poems that I submitted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize—I look at this through the lens of language, heritage, Blackness, spirituality, education, police brutality. I find myself interrogating what identity affords us or denies based on the perception of the beholder.

Gaamangwe: How does being a first generation Sierra-Leone American inform your sense of personhood?

Yalie:  I feel like this question is so dynamic in that it might yield a different response depending on the day! Growing up, I was so embarrassed that my parents would drop me off at school with Dr. Oloh’s (he was a legendary Sierra Leonean musical artist) music blaring from the car! I wanted to fly under the radar and not feel different from my peers. I wanted my first name to be more easily pronounced by American tongues. I wanted to be the type of normal that I then perceived to carry a type of safety. The type of identity that my younger self wanted is what my current self would consider a boring and hopeless existence. I think the turning point may have occurred in high school. That was the point that I realized (and likely on my own terms) all that I did not know about Africa and all of the countries within it. I happened upon a plethora of gems and miracles through researching. I realized that the culture of Sierra Leone could be mine if I made a space for it within myself. After that, so much of the culture that I had grown up with had increasing relevance and began to anchor me. I found a harmony within the space of two cultures—I no longer felt like a victim of dislocation.

Gaamangwe: Talking about African names, your poem “Space”  made me reflect on African names and how they are often made to disappear. For example, my full names are Gaamangwe Joy Chedza Mogami and somehow my second name, Joy has been prioritised over the others. For a long time, I thought it was mostly because it was the easier name, but now I am thinking more deeply about it, as something that enables the way cultures and histories disappear in Africa. But now I am working on claiming my names, as a protest against erasure, and being invisible. Do you also find yourself in a similar path of trying to unbecome invisible? Do you think it’s even possible?

Yalie:  I love this question as well! I think that unbecoming invisible is a daily practice—it’s a type of prayer—to have the courage to walk with your whole self no matter which arena you are stepping into. I am thinking about the things that have been used to make me feel invisible—my race, my ethnicity, my gender, my hometown, my dark skin, my full figure, my voice, my educational background, the list goes on and on. I think for me, the way that I legitimize self is expressing it through artistic expression. By self, I don’t necessarily mean only me. I am thinking about identity when I say this and the experiences that resonate with me on an empathetic level. And to answer your final question, yes I do think it is possible to unbecome invisible. I feel more grounded each time I complete a poem, because the guarantee of writing a completed poem is an honest engagement with myself. Every poem I complete is a practice of resuscitation.

Gaamangwe: That is true. You explored another theme of an act of erasure with your poem, “I Ask My Brother Jonathan to Write About Oakland, and He Describes His Room”.  It got me thinking about the gender dynamics that exists in cases of Police Brutalities. In the way that perhaps, I am assuming, there is a different approach and energy exerted on male black bodies as compared to female black bodies. Do you think the narrative in the poem will be the same if the character was a female person?

Yalie: Every loss of life, especially in the context of police brutality is demoralizing, shameful, and dismal. There seems to be an unfortunate notion (held by an unfortunate number of Americans) that only Black men are the victims of police brutality. I think this might be a result of rhetoric being propagated by media outlets and institutions. Though this is certainly a true story, it is not the only story, and when we do not consider the sum total of bodies under siege, it presupposes that certain Black populations are immune to violence at the hands of law enforcement. There is a type of mythmaking and iconography that exists within Black death and pain that can divert us from the truth.

I think I would have written it the same way if I were writing a story about a woman. What is central to the poem is a palpable, endless, fear of the Black body. And an unwillingness of the world to welcome the subject’s body into this space. It’s a universal theme—negotiating the innocence of one’s existence in order to accommodate another’s terror.

Gaamangwe:  I think the Black body experiences this much violence because the world keep on “othering” it.  How do you navigate spaces of “othering”, and do you think we can move from this “othering” spaces?

Yalie:  I think one way to move away from othering  is making art that is honest, sincere, and authentic. I think the spaces to make art and dialogue about the underpinning of what we create is also crucial. I think that another way we might move away from othering is to have a practice of reflecting and thinking about the actions that we take and how those can allow us to have either an intimate engagement with another’s humanity rather than estrange us from the ability to dignify each other. When considering transgressions and ugliness, I think action is important. As a writer though, I think that perhaps my world moves on a different time signature— I believe that oftentimes our empathy bubbles to the surface when we are still or asking questions—I think if there is a subsequent willingness to hear the answers that come to us, then we’re more apt to have love and respect to dictate our next move.

Gaamangwe: Exactly. What do you hope to create with your poetry?

Yalie: I think I want to have integrity and allegiance to creating poetry that matters. What I mean by that is, I am not always invested in talking about hot and burning issues, I need time to process things so you may not see me writing about things that are happening in the moment. I write more about things that are happening in day to day life.

I make sure that I take my time to write a poem, to think about it and make sure that the details render an image, a narrative or a story that is in line with what I am trying to portray. I want my writing to be lucid and accessible. I don’t want my writing to be understood by a certain group of people that have certain types of degrees from college or from a certain geographical location. I want my poems to transcend those things and the only way I can do that is if my artistic practice is rooted in sincerity.

What that statement means is I may not figure out a poem in 5 minutes, I may start at the middle of the poem and give myself time to do it. I have these moments where I am writing a poem and I’m like “this poem is going to take 10 more hours for the first draft” and the fact that I am not just like “I don’t have 10 hours”  for this poem to be written. It feels good to know that I have some kind of internal poetry clock that is telling me what it might look like because maybe the 10 hours is actually 15 hours or 8 hours. To know that things take time and to not be afraid of that, that has been helpful for me. Being thoughtful, sincere, patient and reflective are actually all tools that have the potential to change things in the world.

Gaamangwe: Yes, I totally agree. Thank you Yalie, and all the best of luck with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlist: A Dialogue With Saddiq Dzukogi

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Saddiq

Saddiq Dzukogi studied at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He has poems featured or forthcoming in literary publications such as: New Orleans Review, African American Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Juked, The Poetry Mail, Chiron Review, Vinyl Poetry, ELSEWHERE LIT’s anthology of contemporary African poetry, The Volta, Construction, Welter, among numerous others. He was a guest at the 2015 Writivism Festival in Uganda as well as at the Nigeria-Korea Poetry Feast in the same year. Saddiq is the Poetry Editor of the online journal, Expound and a three times a finalist in The Association of Nigerian Author’s Poetry Prize. Saddiq lives in Minna, Nigeria. He can be found @saddiqdzukogi.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the calm, city of Minna, Nigeria by Email.

Gaamangwe: Saddiq, congratulations on being shortlisted for Brunel International African Poetry Prize. What does it mean to you to be shortlisted?

Saddiq: Thank you for your kindness Gaamangwe, for asking time to talk to me. This is huge, any effort channeled towards informing you that what you do is important is huge. So being among the shortlisted poets in the running for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize is an incredible dream achieved, that my body is still struggling to come to terms with. When I received the email notifying me of my inclusion I was only able to muster a small voice to whisper to my lover, Mirah, my whole being still stuck in disbelieve. I said “Mirah they say I made it to the shortlist” of course she had a loaded voice that filled up the sitting room. This is really, really huge, it means the little poems I write in the little corner of my room are speaking with the right voice. It means they are alive in the world.

Gaamangwe: I am excited for you. I want to speak about the voices of your poems. What do they speak of and for?

These are voices rising from the silence a body has been chained to. It is like the voices seek to break the body loose from this. The poems seek to say all the things I have not been allowed to say. Some of my poems are autobiographical and sometimes fictional, but most times these poems speak about the lives of those living close to me, speak about what I hear the street say. So basically you could say the poems try to speak for the voiceless, this include the poet himself.

Gaamangwe: What are the specific things that you and your speakers, have not been allowed to say?

Saddiq: Here especially in Nigeria, people think they’ve got a saying in your life, in the way you do things, how you should and shouldn’t live, there is this perceived moral net where everyone is expected to live within. This is predominate in the Nigerian society especially up north, where the older folks think guys as young as myself cannot hold their own destinies in their own hands. As a young person in Nigeria the society doesn’t listen to you, you are small to be listened to, the society thinks there is nothing positive the young adult can contribute. This is a society that wants to determine everything for you. How you should eat, how you should talk, who you should be, who you should love.

It is especially disappointing that even in the literary space this is true. Just a few days ago another conversation began raging, and it is what issue the writer is expected to engage with. Then “Poverty porn”, “Poverty porn”. People expect a writer to engage the environment in a way that the literary materials produced must discuss issues that are politically relevant to the society. People expect the African text to be about struggles. Some do not think so, some think some writers exploit the yearnings for African sad stories by the west to exaggerate the plight of the African. I take all this to be bullshit, no one has got the exclusivity of prescribing what should be written. Personally I get sickened by this spectacular cases of corruption, mob actions on people who seek to express their sexuality the only way they know how. There are a lot of documentation that is needed about Africa, there is a lot the world doesn’t know about Africa, and I expect the African gatekeepers and critics to know that it’s ok to want to engage with another hue of Africa that the world is yet to interact with, it is okay for a writer to write about the colors, the laughter that have been able to rise from the ash of what we all have allowed to burn. It is okay for a writer to engage in what is of fascination to them, it is a free world and even if you are a religious person, God has given ‘free will’, why do men like taking that away?

Gaamangwe: I saw that conversation as well. It’s really getting old. All stories are valid and serve different purposes to different people. The only role of the writer is to write whatever comes through them. For you, what are the worlds that fascinate you, and the ones you want to engage in with your writing?

Saddiq: Yes, yes you are right, let whatever that wants to come, come! I am just there floating and letting the worlds come through my eyes and live inside my body. I do not consciously try to engage a specific issue, I am so obedient to the muse, as I let my mind fondle with the knob of anything that fascinates me until the door opens to me and to the world. But unconsciously family tales have been a reoccurring issue in my writing, I talk more and more about family now, in addition to the environment. I love to pay mind to the things that are there but are seemingly too insignificant to the world of big significant things. The little things we take for granted are enormous, and those are the things I want the world to notice when it interacts with my writing.

Gaamangwe: I am often fascinated by individual realities, within their immediate environment too. I was moved by your poem “Father’s demise”, I wonder if it inspired by real events, and what meanings were important for you to explore in this poem?

Saddiq: Everybody wants to know if that story is real. Well, it was inspired by a real event, a friend’s reality. He told me the story while I was at the NYSC orientation camp in Iseyin, the home town of Rasaq who’s also on the shortlist. When I got that story it was frightening. This friend personally requested that I write about it. I was reluctant at first as I tried to encourage him to write it himself. But at the end, I internalized the story and made it mine. I wrote the poem keeping the flavor of the story and fictionalizing the content within the frame already drawn. In the poem I wanted to explore the pretence that family love is unconditional, most times this is not completely true, because we lose claim to some degree of the familial love when we are not as family wants us to be.

Gaamangwe: That’s a sad story Saddiq, but as you said, far more common than we realize. Many families exists on the continuum of both love and pain, a lot of traumas and grieves too. You explored a different love with “When the Clock Said”. Can you tell me about this poem, and your thoughts about love in general?

Saddiq: This particular poem was basically about a love that has been lost and lamentations for the lack of it. Talking about love seem to be a lot more fun than it is now. As a teenager I indulge in writing of a lot of sentimental poems. Yes I agree with you that love comes with a lot of grief and traumas, especially the love of home; Nigeria. I find it funny how much I am grateful to Nigeria for messing us up this much. I am grateful because through the poems I am always able to make some sort of art from the pain, from the misery this home allows to batter my body. I have been thinking of late, that what would happen to me if I have the best conditions here, no wars, no killings, no lynching of innocent boys and girls, no hatred but the abundance of love. I am thinking what that may mean to the part of me that I cherish the most, the parts that respond to these things via art. I will readily give up this love for art to have a saner society here.

I love to think I am a lover. My father taught me that only love can save the world. The most complicated of problems the world faces could go away the next minute if everyone could just embody genuine love for the world we live in and uphold a sort of commitment to nullify hate, wherever we find it. I feel love is the strongest weapon, a lot of people think it makes you vulnerable to love, but that’s not true, love makes you invincible because when you go into a supposed battle, you go in there with all your loved ones in your heart. They give you the strength to overcome anything that seems insurmountable.

Gaamangwe: This speaks to me. The only weapon we truly have against the darkness of the world is love. Light comes and multiplies in love! Thank you Saddiq, and all the best of luck with Brunel International African Poetry Prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist

Dialogues

Brunel International African Poetry Prize Shortlist: A Dialogue with Richard Oduor Oduku

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richard-oduku

Richard Oduor Oduku is a post-cynical humanist, a researcher, and a poet and writer. He studied Biomedical Science and Technology and works as a research consultant in Nairobi, Kenya. He has been published in Jalada Africa, Saraba Magazine, Kwani? Storymoja, This is Africa among others. His story ‘eNGAGEMENT’ published in the JaladaAfrofutures anthology was longlisted for the BSFA Awards 2015. He is also a Nonfiction Editor at Panorama – The Journal for Intelligent Travel. He is a founding member of Jalada Africa and is also a Co-Curator and Festival Coordinator for the Jalada Mobile Literary and Art Festival running in five countries in East Africa.

This conversation took place in the cold, sweetspot of Gaborone, Botswana and the bustling cosmopolitan, city of Nairobi, Kenya by Email.

Gaamangwe: Richard, congratulations for being on the Brunel International African Poetry Prize shortlist. What does it mean to you to be shortlisted?

Richard: It is a good feeling to know that somebody enjoyed what I wrote. Going through hundreds and hundreds of submission to find one or two or three which sparks enough to light one’s fire is a difficult thing, and so I’m grateful for the honor of being named alongside contemporaries shape shifting the landscape of writing within the continent.

Gaamangwe: Your poetry is indeed illuminative. What narratives are you trying to explore with your poetry?

Richard: I speak with many voices. I’m fluid enough to flow into any conversation, and drown into so many floods. It is the curse of the vain. The relentless pursuit of knowing, the chronic insatiability. But I have always been interested in meanings, in the boundaries of things. Where does one thing begin, where does one thing end. What is mixing with what to create what and how?

And to know, I have to hear and see. One can say my poetry, at least now, is an experiment at seeing and hearing, much clearer than I was doing before. I’m trying to absorb so much that is good in the world, in the vain hope of becoming a better self.

So what I’m exploring now is just how to see better, how to hear better, how to feel my footsteps and how to hear my words before they reach an ear other than mine. I’m doing this to try to reclaim my innocence.

I was listening, the other day, a TED talk by Lidia Yuknavitch, and she said something like we have the ability to reinvent ourselves, endlessly. I want myself and my poetry to be solid enough as the roots of a huge ober tree, but I also want the ability to reinvent myself endlessly, and this means that my poetry will probably feature things, places, and people in an endless process of reinvention, of metamorphosis.

Gaamangwe: That’s powerful. What are you reinventing yourself from, and to what?

Richard: That is now a difficult question. I don’t know how to answer that. How much do we know about our own lives? How much of the narrative we have created for our lives is true?

So maybe when I talk of learning to see and hear better, as a way of knowing myself better, as a way of giving myself countless opportunities for reinventing myself endlessly, I know it looks like a process of moving from point A to B, what I mean is that by being acutely self-aware, the process is also the result, the departure is the destination.

What I mean, if I’m to borrow, some words from the movie Waking Life, is that “the idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.”

Gaamangwe: So reinvention here, is merely re-encountering the self with a new light or understanding. Nothing is being erased or re-made in a new form. I love that. What are the speakers in your poetry being acutely aware of and arriving to?

Richard: Yes! You’ve said it rather beautifully! The speakers are the many voices I talked about. For some time now I have been intellectually interested in psychogeography, injecting a little playfulness in life and willing to drift, or as Guy Dubord would say, to escape the spectacle of modern life. I think we are living in an age of distraction, and life has become an immense accumulation of spectacles. In this age of inauthenticity we risk passing through life asleep. We’ll become spectators, watching our own lives race by. So in living, as in writing the poems, I have become more interested in what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing when I navigate my existence in different spaces and environments.

So the speakers in the poems are just observing and taking notes. Some of these observations, these notes become poems. Some fall on the wayside like a half-heard conversation when one cuts Nairobi’s streets like a laser beam. Some are memories of a life lived, a life observed elsewhere years ago. Such recollections sometimes demand the privilege to be written, to be preserved between pages as poems. Some are tapped, conversations one wasn’t supposed to be part of but have, with much mischief, become their chronicler. There are many voices. My work is just to be self-aware, to be unclogged enough to allow the rivers of humanity to pass through my processing system.

The poems, including the few that were sent for the prize, came from these many places, bearing many witnesses, conspiracies, and hallucinations.

Gaamangwe: I also think a lot about how geographies influence people. What of my psyche, and my life, is merely a result of the placement and the realities of the places I inhabit. What are your thoughts on how the realities and history of Nairobi and Kenya has influenced your life and your poetry?

Richard: You know I was reading an interview done in the Paris Review. I think it is the Art of Fiction 225 and it features Herta Müller who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize. In the interview, she complains that language is so different from life. How is one supposed to fit one into the other? So she says that the first thing one has to do is to take everything apart, that you cut out the reality and then you use language to create something completely different. If one is lucky enough, they may produce something that is much closer to the reality they wanted to capture before artificiality set in. We succeed, in the end, in writing half of what we intended, the other half remains as silence. Silence too, is a form of speaking.

Your question reminds me of that answer Müller gave, that we must embody creation, become the creator. In a way, there are things that wake up history in us. Take for example Nairobi or Kenya. These are places with very complex histories. Sometimes the history you have been taught is not it. Is not the truth. So whatever you meet, whatever history I’m meeting, I have to try and take it apart. There are times when such a process allows me to see what was inscribed beneath, what has been covered by new paint. Most times it is unpleasant. I’m uncomfortable with any kind of history until I have laid it on my surgical table, dissected it and known what is stored in places one cannot see if they don’t cut. I’m cutting open and recreating as I go. My hope is that I find the language each time I see something I should immerse myself in. The reality is that most times I don’t, but I try.

Gaamangwe: Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, did say that reality exists independent from us. The human mind is translating our experiences as it passes through reality. There is a certain loss of translation too, also because we are perceiving too many stimulus at once, especially now. It creates a certain restlessness. But also, we are passing through new experiences, unique and different from the others, and that demands a different language.

But, do you think language is the only thing making translating life difficult? How else can we fill the gaps that exists in our histories?

Richard: Kant was right. And we are a medium for so many things. We are actively involved in translating the world, and giving meaning to experiences. Language is one of the biggest tools we have to do this job.

I do believe we, and I do not singularly refer to writers or historians, we have a responsibility, in our own individual ways to fill the gaps in our histories. A recent IBM report reported that we are generating 2.5 million terabytes of data per day. In Wikipedia alone, there are more than 5 million articles in the English language. If you add all the 293 languages, we have 40 million articles on so many diverse topics. Over 27 billion words on Wikipedia alone. These are the modern forms of keeping the translated histories, knowledge, memories, and imaginations of the world.

We can decide to be tangible, and ask ourselves: how many of our, I mean African, languages are represented in these expanding repositories of global memory? Very little, if any, of anything existing online today has been captured by our languages. And not only African languages, African people. We need to be more involved in translating the world through our own unique experiences.

There is a project on Languages and Translations that Jalada Africa has been running. The idea was to have one story, from a renowned African voice, and translating it into as many languages as possible. As we speak now, the project has translated Ngugi wa Thiongo’s story, Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ (The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright), into 63 languages. 47 of these languages are African. Now imagine that we have more than 2500 languages in Africa! Try to imagine how many stories are hidden in these languages.

In essence, I think that to bridge the gaps, we have to be part of the global community of knowledge generators, that way we leave our footprints on the world, even if we pass on. It is the surest way of, ensuring that our histories don’t get lost in translation, of being heard, of bridging the gaps in our histories.

Gaamangwe: The Languages and Translations projects is such an important project. We really need more archiving, more translations, more engagements with our own languages, experiences and histories. But with Jalada Africa, and other literary magazines, and historians and storytellers, we will get there. Thank you Richard, and all the best of luck with Brunel International African Poetry prize and your poetry.

NB: This interview is part of a collective book project with all the incredible and talented shortlisted poets for the 2017 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.

Download the full book HERE: Conversations with Brunel Poetry Prize Shortlist