Sentinel
Poetry #35 – October 2005 Online Magazine Monthly…since
December 2002. ISSN 1479-425X
The Unyielding Muse
Interview with Guest
Poet Uche Nduka
By Amatoritsero Ede
Amatoritsero Ede: Uche Nduka, your name
rings a loud bell in Nigerian and certain European poetic scenes. You have won
the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for Poetry—with Chiaroscuro,
yet it is not easy to find your books in circulation. What is happening?
Uche Nduka: How weird! I cannot
adequately answer you. Perhaps my publishers ought to answer the question
as I am not directly involved in the distribution of my books. However I know
that the books can be ordered in bookshops and in Amazon.de.
I am also aware that those deeply interested in poetry have found ways to track
down the books.
A.E.: One would have
expected you to be signed by a major publisher by now. Do you think perhaps you
should pander to the publishers' whims and write a crime thriller?
U.N.: I honestly don't give
a fuck whether I am published by a "major" publisher or a
"minor" publisher. It is important that the poetry is secured against
loss. I find it more fruitful to be able to write the poems. To allow what
wants to come out through me to do so. I am beholden to the scripting of lines,
refrains, choruses, chants, mantras etc than to any other thing. I will regard
it as a betrayal of my calling if I heed a publisher's voice rather than the
inner voice in me. I will feel I have sold out if I let the outside - be it
publishers, literary coteries, critics, peers, friends, enemies dictate the
content or form of my writings. So the issue of pandering to publishers'
demands is out.
A.E.: You lived in
U.N.: The movements you
referred to have made certain things about myself and the world clearer. For
instance: I hate melancholic resignation. I hate expressions that verge on the extreme,
on the fanatical, on the dogmatic. I hate religious and artistic and political
fatalisms. I have no absolute faith regarding utopia, so-called free market,
idealism, post-colonialism, postmodernism, artistic magic. The stuffy and the
staid have never attracted me-in life and art. Disillusionment is not
emblematic of my life and thought. I find provincialism odious. Each book and
style charts my growth, my searches, and my experience and contacts. I can no
longer abstract my writing from my life. Most times they fuse. My doubt
witnesses the clarity of my faith. My faith affirms the valiance of my doubt.
In the present phase of my work I treasure generic inventiveness. I try to
battle the commoditization of literature. I struggle to record the core of
living in whichever way it touches and moves me and those close to me wherever
I happen to be:
A.E.: What is funding like
for foreign writers in
U.N.: I am not aware of any
funding for foreign writers in
A.E.: How do you feel in the
prevailing atmosphere of increased xenophobia in
U.N..: Why not? As long as
the poetry is not written along party lines. As long as the poetry comes from
the deepest part of humanity. As long as it is not a poetry of hatred. But
hoisting poetry up as a weapon of defence is not
enough. An unsentimental education of consciousness is needed to stem the
present tide of xenophobia here in
A.E.: ‘Brothers
Keepers’, a coalition of Afro-German Hip-hop artists in
U.N.: Not yet. But plans are
underway for such a collective. Some writers are presently meeting to work out
the logistics for such an umbrella group. Yes: I occasionally work with members
of the Brothers Keepers-in strategising, in street
protests, in media info releases.
A.E.: You were in
U.N.: A three-week visit
home is not enough time for me to be able to do an appraisal of the poetry
being written nationally but the works-the majority of the works I saw on
display at the Association of Nigerian Authors Conference in Lokoja - are
shoddy, half-baked, visionless, gutless, anaemic, mediocre. Though there are
more books of poetry published in Nigeria today than ever before, the themes
they explore and the way they are explored, to my mind, are halting and
cowardly. To me, political ineptitude and economic depression are no excuses
for bad and sterile poetry. There is no risk taking in most of the works I saw.
They all seem to fall into a kind of linguistic pigeon-holing and stasis.
Except for the writings of people like Chiedu Ezeanah, Nengi
ILagha, Toyin Adewale, Chijioke Amu-nnadi, Joe Ushie,
David Diai, Maxim Uzoatu and a few others, home-based workers in the vineyard
of poetry are thorough disappointments.
A.E.: Is there the kind of
literary ferment typical of the 1980s? If so, are these efforts getting
published?
U.N.: Like I said earlier,
publishing doesn't seem to be the problem in
A.E.: .Do Nigerian
publishers still hate poetry; must the poet pay to publish himself/herself?
U.N.: Yes vanity publishing
is widespread. And running from poetry is not restricted to Nigerian publishers
as you know yourself. But how I wish that current Nigerian poetry will question
itself instead of praising its stasis. How I wish we won't go on forgetting
that actuality + Invention + discovery = Poetry.
A.E.: Do we expect any new
work from you soon?
U.N.: A new volume titled Heart's Field shall be out in
A.E.: Uche, thank you for
your time.
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