ktravula – a travelogue!

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Attempted Speech & Other Poems

Some good news! This morning, my first (adult*) chapbook of poems was published on Saraba Magazine. It is a collection of 15 (mostly*) never-before published poems. It is titled Attempted Speech & Other Fatherhood Poems.

Most of the poems centre around the birth of my child, my contemplations of the fatherhood process, and other ruminations about him, children in general, and surrounding experiences. Please head here and download it. It is free to download and to read.

The publication also features an interview with the magazine, along with readings of three of the poems in the chapbook, uploaded to Soundcloud. I hope you enjoy the package as much as I did writing it. Special thanks to Emmanuel Iduma, Dami Ajayi, and Adebiyi Olasope for their work in bringing this to life.

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* I say “adult” only because I find it necessary to give a hat tip to my first (and altogether ill-fated) outing from ten years ago in a collection called Headfirst into the Meddle (2005). I say “mostly” because a few of the poems in this current collection, in a different form or another, have been featured/workshopped on my social media pages at some point in the past. In any case, ignoring occasional outing of one or two other poems in LitMags across the world, this is my first major literary debut in ten years.

Sailing in Lagos

When I started teaching in Lagos, in 2012, on return from Edwardsville, one of the things I had in mind was finding a way to combine my passion for literature with my training and vocation as a teacher and linguist. First through a series of “Meet-A-Writer” events where we brought practising writers to meet and interact with the students, and also through excursions to events to fire up students’ artistic sensibilities, I succeeded to a reasonable extent. One of the highlights of the last Ake Arts and Books Festival, for me as a guest and as a guide to the students of mine that I brought along, was the ride home listening to the literary and creative aspirations of the students and their prospects for the future.

Gradually becoming disenchanted with the overall purpose of teaching English language as a compulsory subject (and a medium of instruction) in a post-colonial society, the idea of literature as a flight of fancy and a window into the mind and creativity of young adults became something more interesting, and certainly more rewarding than teaching grammar in a language compelled by law, sustained by an illusion, and limiting in the true sense of the capability to express the identity of the continent. There’s an irony here, of course, in the fact that these literatures, for now, are also expressed in this same “limiting” language. But that’s a story for another day.

Last year, an idea I’ve had for a while on the possibility of harnessing students’ creative energy in a book form found enthusiastic audience with the school administration. The result is an 86-paged anthology of students’ work in poetry, prose fiction, drama, essay, and visual arts, published by Whitesands School and Feathers & Ink publishing house in Ibadan. Along with the privilege of being in the book, a few of the students are also being rewarded with positions when their work is compared with the others. We were also privileged to have prominent literary practitioners in Nigeria read and judge the prizes beforehand. For this first edition, these judges were Chika Unigwe and Tade Ipadeola, both previous winners of the Nigerian Prize for Literature (worth $100,000). In short, it was a thoroughly emotionally and intellectually stimulating experience for the teachers and the students.

The book was publicly presented on June 25 at the school, with parents of winning students present. The book is also being given to all the over 400 students in the school as an incentive to working hard to be selected for the next edition. From what I’ve heard, it is having precisely that effect. For the students whose work appear in it as well, there’s an obvious air of pride and accomplishment. In the next couple of weeks, the book should also be on Amazon and other internet outlets for free download. From what I’ve heard as positive reviews of the project, even the idea itself is ripe for scaling. Given adequate sponsorship, there’s plenty more dimensions in which this can go. For now, however, the pride of being able to accomplish something this little with substantial impact is unquantifiable. Read Tade Ipadeola’s review.

Here’s one anecdote that almost brought me to tears. Yesterday, the vice-principal of the school called to tell me of the decision of a parent of one of the students to pull out the child. As a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, the parents thought it was time for the child to relocate and join his other siblings. Not having told the boy before now, he was devastated, but not for an obvious reason. According to the father, the child expressed regret that having missed a chance to be published in The Sail: Issue 1, he had already started working towards entering as many creative work as possible so as to get a chance for the next issue (due January, 2016). Now, that dream is being taken away from him, without an agency to influence the process.

I have been extraordinarily buoyed by the sadness of that story for the last 24 hours. It’s almost enough to compensate for everything else wrong with the compulsion in English language learning.

Memories of Ake (ii): Panels, Poetry, and Palmwine

On Friday morning, I returned to Abeokuta with the whole family, this time by driving. The room at the hotel at the Continental Suites was spacious and comfortable. Africa Magic played on television, with a number of interesting shows that took me back to memories of Ibadan where traditional and cultural stories were a mainstay of television entertainment. After a short nap, we returned to the Cultural Centre for lunch and a panel with Mukoma wa Ngugi, Eghosa Imasuen and Kei Miller. I already wrote a few thoughts on this panel in a previous blogpost.

Aptly titled Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense: Taming Colonial Tongues, it was a stimulating discussion that led, as planned, slowly, to a crucial crescendo of creative eruptions. The meat of the panel was to be in the question and answer sessions, but that wasn’t to be, as we were interrupted by the presence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo whose Book Chat was about to begin. Security protocols required that all guests be seated before the entrance of the former president and that no one would be allowed in afterwards. Dilemma conceded to pragmatism and curiosity, and the panel was dismissed inconclusively. If I’m ever asked what my regret from the Festival was, it would be not being able to enjoy the Q&A (or insisting on the will of the audience to keep the language panel open while the book chat with Prez Obasanjo also went on in a different hall. I also know that other considerations made this impossible: one member of the panel was the publisher of Chief Obasanjo’s new autobiography My Watch, and needed to be there). So, maybe the blame is mine. The Q&A could have started earlier. In any case, I intend to take up particular issues with each of the members of the panel in future events and interviews. The best news from the panel was the announcement of the Mabati-Cornell Swahili Prize for Literature, a brainchild of Mukoma wa Ngugi and Lizzy Attree.

The panel involving President Obasanjo and the other involving Professor Soyinka deserve a blogpost of their own, so I won’t go into them here.

Other delights in the Festival include another panel on Modern African Languages, featuring Dami Ajayi, Bassey Ikpi, G’Ebinyo Ogbowei, Jumoke Verissimo, and Kei Miller, and the Night of Poetry Performances hosted by the able Remi Raji. poets and performers delighted and inspired us, while palm wine kept us in a state of ease. After this was the final banquet of food and dance, and the Ake Festival 2014 was done. On Sunday morning, while a few writers went on a tour of Abeokuta, particularly the famous Olumo Rock, I bottled my hangover in a coffee cup and headed back to Lagos. It had been a most delightful weekend.

Indigenous Language in Literature: What Hip-Hop Can Teach Us

One of the highlights of my participation in the recently concluded Ake Arts and Book Festival was at a panel I moderated titled “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense: Taming Colonial Tongues”. In that panel were Mukoma wa Ngugi (writer and son of prominent African writer and perennial Nobel favourite Ngugi wa Thiong’o), Kei Miller (a Caribbean novelist and poet), and Eghosa Imasuen (author and publisher from Kachifo Farafina). Our task was to examine the use of languages in contemporary fiction by African writers, perhaps with hopes of prescribing a better dynamic for the future. It was during that panel that this new Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature was first announced, a prize that broke new grounds for being the first major prize on the continent that awards literature in indigenous languages.

The discussion on the panel had focused on this issue itself, examining the complexities of contemporary language use and the logic in the argument of those who insist that English has already taken root as one of Africa’s languages. If not the largest, certainly the one with the most reach around the continent. But nagging us back to the importance of using languages native to the continent in literatures documenting hopes, aspirations and experiences on/of the same continent, was the embarrassing lack of a large industry among intellectuals for publishing in the native language. Excepting Miller (who is from Jamaica) whose first and only language is English and its creolized cousin (the Jamaican patois), the argument eventually coalesced into the diametric poles of Ngugi’s description of the use of English in the third world “metaphysical empire” and Eghosa’s acceptance of English (this time of the Nigerian variation) as a first and most intimate language. It’s an old debate, featuring Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Chinua Achebe. I highly recommend this video too, as well as this review by Mukoma’s of the recently published Africa 39, anthology.

Why do Nigerian publishers shy away from publishing in Yoruba, or Igbo, or Hausa, to start with the country’s biggest languages? According to Eghosa, the publisher on the panel, it has to do with the nature of the market. In the Q&A, Bibi Bakare (publisher at Cassava Republic) rejected this premise, citing the case of Onitsha market literature and a number of locally produced literature in northern Nigeria that have sold out in the hundreds of thousands through mostly informal means. Unfortunately, the panel ended too abruptly for the discussion to thrive. The consensus however appeared to have favoured the resurgence of literature in African language through a conscious and concert effort by those concerned. English, after all, isn’t going away anytime soon. It will never have a reason to worry about any threat to its existence. We can’t say the same of the indigenous languages of the continent.

I have just watched a music video by Nigerian hip-hop rave of the moment, Olamide, whose fusion of Yoruba slangs, proverbs, and codes with sparse English and pidgin English words stands out in a unique genre, made famous by the now late DaGrin a few years ago. What the success of people like DaGrin, Olamide, Olu Maintain, etc teach us with respect to language is that the market for local language in art production is still a booming one. It will only take the courage to take the risk, and the conviction to persist. The market usually responds to novelty and dynamism more than they do compliance and monotony. The inauguration of the Mabati-Cornell Prize is just the start. We need even more of those types of incentives for literature in African languages, for works in translation, for bold new experiment s that reject the bland consensus that English has won. We are richer for more ways of expression, not just in style and content, but also in language. Our literature (and, most importantly, our imagination) and our cultural experiences will be the richer for it.

Temie Giwa/OnePercent on the BBC

The One Percent Project, an organisation on whose board I am a member and which I’ve written about here and here, dedicated to finding lasting solutions to the problem of the lack of safe and reliable blood for transfusion in Nigeria through advocacy, blood drives, and other direct action, made the limelight today. It was featured, through the founder, Temie Giwa, on the BBC’s list of 100 Women in 2014 working to make a difference in the world.

She is the only third Nigerian on the list, along with Funmi Iyanda (a famous former TV presenter) and Obiageli Ezekwesili, Former World Bank Vice President for Africa and Former Minister for Education, Nigeria. Other non-Nigerians on the global list include Joyce Banda, the current president of Malawi, Dr Yasmin Altwaijri, Saudi mental health and obesity scientist, among others. She is also the youngest.

Well deserved, even if I say so myself.

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