Tanure Ojaide & Dike Okoro
DISCUSSING AESTHETICS, POLITICS, CULTURE, CRAFT AND THE WRITER
Tanure Ojaide is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, including Labyrinths of the Delta (1986), The Endless
Song (1987), The Fate of Vultures (1990), The Blood of Peace (1991), Daydreams of Ants (1997), Invoking the
Warrior Spirit: New and selected Poems (1999), In the Kingdom of Songs: A Trilogy (1995-2000), The Tale of the
Harmattan (2007); a memoir, Great Boys: An African Childhood (1998); three works of fiction including Sovereign
Body (2005) and The Activist (2007); and five books of literary criticism including The Poetry of Wole Soyinka and
Poetic Imagination in Black Africa. A Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa, Ojaide was educated at the
University of Ibadan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in English, and Syracuse University, where he received
both the MA in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English. His poetry awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for
the African Region, the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award, and the
Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Award. He is currently the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana
Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has read his poetry in Israel, Mexico, Canada, the United
States, the Netherlands, Ghana, Britain, Malaysia, and Nigeria. The interview below is taken from a collected
recording of telephone conversation and email correspondence Dike Okoro had with Ojaide between 2006 and 2008.
Dike Okoro’s publications include the poetry collection, Dance of the Heart (2007) and two anthologies of poetry:
Echoes from the Mountain: New and Selected Poems by Mazisi Kunene (2007), and Songs for Wonodi: An Anthology
of Poems (2007). He obtained a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and both the MA in
African American literature and MFA in Creative Writing from Chicago State University. His interviews, book
reviews, essays and poems have appeared in literary magazines and journals in Norway, the Americas, South Africa,
Britain, and Nigeria.
Dike Okoro: You are one of the most accomplished writers of your generation. When and how did you start
writing?
Tanure Ojaide: I think the circumstances of my upbringing and education generated the interest in writing in me. I
grew up in the midst of poet-singers and my Grandmother who raised me sang songs to me. In addition, the schools
of those days taught one to be creative. From Federal Government College, Warri (1966-67) to University of Ibadan
(1968-71), there were associations such as the Debating and Literary Society and the Poetry Club respectively to join
to exercise your writing talent. There were also student magazines to publish your writing. Of course, I had inspiring
teachers at Warri and Ibadan, some of whom like Harold Whitehall who was a poet, encouraged me to write. The
happenings of the civil war (1967-70) also brought up feelings of what I wanted to express.
DO: Tell me a bit about your school days at the University of Ibadan.
TO: The University of Ibadan in those days of the late sixties created the atmosphere for creativity. There were no
distractions as you have now of cable television and other postmodern games. We spent much of our time in the
classroom and the library. But it was a time that we felt we had a place in history and a mission to fulfill. We were
political and took part in demonstrations; sometimes we bused to Lagos. We were intellectually alert as we read widely
and engaged in debates. It was at Ibadan that Niyi Osundare, Dr. Babalola, and I formed the Poetry Club. My Ibadan
days were the best of times to be a budding writer. We had good inspiration from our teachers, especially Harold
Whitehall, McVeagh, Dan Izevbaye, and others.
DO: You teach at UNC Charlotte, North Carolina. How long have you been in the United States?
TO: I was at Syracuse for study from 1978 to 1981. I later came back to teach in 1989 first at Whitman College,
Walla Walla before coming to UNC Charlotte in 1990, where I have been since then. You can see that I have thus
been in the United States for up to twenty years.
DO: Do you think that America has had an effect on your work, especially in relation to the experience of
being black in America?
TO: Of course, I studied here and my Syracuse experience has profound impact on me. How can I separate myself
from many of my teachers such as Hayden Carruth and Philip Booth? I matured as a writer in the United States. In
addition to Syracuse, I have been in many artists’ colonies that gave me the time and space to write and rubbed minds
with other literary artists.
My American experience also matters for me as a writer. As for being black, that has not really played much in my
individual experience as a writer.
DO: Are there any local artists whose works inspire you in North Carolina?
TO: None I can think of. It is not artists that inspire me at this stage. It is my response to the reality that I live or
imagine. I am part of the world and what happens here in North Carolina is oftentimes symptomatic of the human
condition. There is as much discrimination, political corruption, vote-rigging, and other vices in North Carolina as
elsewhere in the world. There is injustice. There are the disadvantaged. To me, on a certain level, it no longer matters
where I live. My mission is to write poems or stories based on the human condition. I am for a humane society and
want to lift the human spirit.
DO: Since you taught at the University of Maiduguri for years, is it right to say that some of your early
poetry is influenced by life in Northern Nigeria?
TO: No. Unless by early you don’t mean the poems in both Children of Iroko and Labyrinths of the Delta, which were
written in the Niger Delta, at Warri. However, the four collections, which follow those two early ones, were written
while I was at Maiduguri. And I was there for quite some time. Northern Nigeria has a stamp on my poetry—I draw
images from the environment and the folklore of the people. It really expanded my poetic field and imagination while in
Northern Nigeria. A recent work as In the House of Words (2005) is much influenced by my going back to Maiduguri
in 2002.
DO: Who do you consider your basic audience, the people who will read and appreciate your work?
TO: I will say I consider Nigerians, Africans, and all human beings as my basic audience.
DO: As a poet, do you have any rituals or things you must have to write poems? The right dress code, for
instance?
TO: No rituals with me. However, I tend to wake early in the morning to write. I also write after my siesta in the late
afternoon. Talking of rituals, I collect pens and write with almost a different poem on different days. After writing and
revising in my notebook, I type the fairly finished poem into the computer for more revisions.
DO: Do you go through a strong revision process, or do some poems come out finished?
TO: Occasionally some poems come out finished such as “The fate of vultures,” which I wrote out of anger. When
there is rage and love, many poems come out almost finished. However, I allow the poem to lead me on during the
three hours or so of inspiration. After then I come back to revise it—a word here and there and line arrangement. In
recent years, I keep the poems for a year or so to be fully done.
DO: Do you ever experiment with other forms?
TO: I experiment with different poetic forms. I have done so with traditional forms such as abuse and praise poems,
that is udje and praise chants respectively. In recent years, you can see that I have experimented with epic
conventions, couplets, tercets, and quatrains. I pay more attention now to form than before and that has made me
experiment with different structural forms for the architecture of my poems.
DO: What changes have you observed in your poetry over the years?
TO: My readers will be in a better position to answer this question. Yes, it has definitely changed. I think my poetry
has changed in content and form. I think I have moved from purely public themes to personal and sometimes mystical
themes. I would think my collections are more coordinated now than before. As for form, I pay more attention to it
than in much earlier poems. I now strike a delicate balance between content and form.
DO: Where does the material come from? Do the poems attack you, or do you sit down and try to write?
TO: I will say the poems assault me! When the inspiration comes, I feel like one hungry and must eat; then without
writing down my experience there won’t be peace. For the most part, I write on inspiration. Only a few times have I
sat down to write without being driven to do so by the muse.
DO: Where do your subjects come from?
TO: My subjects come from daily life experiences—the culture, society, politics, and others. My relationship with
others, my observations, my yearnings, and my overall experiences trigger subjects to write about pain, love, fear,
hope, et cetera.
DO: How do you find your words?
TO: Whenever I am inspired, the words come willy-nilly. Every subject has its own way of finding a suitable
expression. Words, images, and figures carry the emotions or ideas I want to express. Until I complete a poem I have
no idea of the words that will be there. So the words are part of the inspiration. Let me say that the words are the
dresses of the experiences I express.
DO: Who is your favorite poet?
TO: My favorite poet has changed from time to time—no fixed favorite poet in my writing career. My early favorites
were Leopold Sedar Senghor and Christopher Okigbo. But then, at one time or the other it was Boris Pasternak,
Odysseus Elytis, Pablo Neruda, and Derek Walcott.
DO: Do you have a favorite poem of your own?
TO: This is like asking a parent for a favorite child! I have many favorite poems such as “Where Everybody Is King,”
“The fate of vultures,” and “Remembering.”
DO: Do you write every day?
TO: I try to write every day. Even on days without a fresh inspiration, I revise what I have already written.
DO: Many of your poems seem to be about the Niger Delta area in Nigeria. Why?
TO: As I said earlier, the Niger Delta is my home and I was raised there; hence I draw so much from it. The oil-
producing area is rife with issues of environmental degradation, minority rights, issues of justice, and fairness. To a
large extent, the Niger Delta is a microcosm of Nigeria and the world. It forms the backcloth to my writings but my
vision is for all humanity. I think most poets go back in memory to where they were raised. My often going back to
the Niger Delta can also be explained in this light.
DO: What would you say the African writer’s role in society should be?
TO: The writer should be a pathfinder in the sense of his or her vision. So the writer must be truthful about the
conditions of his people but must hold on to their hope. The African writer must be activist in a way to fight the
negative forces that dehumanize his or her people. The African writer must praise the good and condemn the bad but
must focus on uplifting the overall ethics of his or her people. This said, each writer should be free to write as he/she
pleases or take the direction he/she best leads to the ideal society or humanity.
DO: We lost Christopher Okigbo and Ken Saro-Wiwa to troubling times and moments in the political history
of our country. Should there be a limit in the African writer’s participation in political/social change?
TO: The writer is not a politician; at the same time the writer must exercise a moral authority to lead society into the
right direction. Both Okigbo and Saro-Wiwa died but what they stood for individually still lives. Writers tend to choose
the extent to which they can be political, but almost every African poet is political in one way or the other.
DO: Have you ever written in Urhobo?
TO: Yes. Not many poems, but I have a collection of Urhobo poems with their English translations. It is not yet
published but I have read from it in Nigeria.
DO: In drawing from your Urhobo traditions, do you feel any commitment to your African audience and
their links with those traditions?
TO: While Urhobo traditions are unique in their own ways, they also share similarities with other poetic traditions. For
instance, the udje dance song tradition is similar to the Ghanaian/Togolese Ewe halo tradition and other abuse
traditions in Africa. Similarly the praise songs of the Urhobo are comparable to the Yoruba ijala and the Zulu izibongo.
Thus drawing from my Urhobo traditions, I feel that I am working within the African oral poetic tradition. Poetry, I
have often said, is a cultural production and the cultural aesthetics affect its creation. I see myself as working in the
African poetic tradition, much as I get influenced by other poetic traditions, especially the learned Western one.
DO: When you move from Urhobo to English, when you translate your own poetry, do you change the
content of it to fit the context of the new language?
TO: Yes, I do. Urhobo is a tonal language and the subtleties of sound there are different from those of English with its
own meter. Also the words in Urhobo connote differently from English words. The language in which I first write a
poem is its original language and the translation does not match the original. The response among Urhobo speakers
when I read “Aruo-o” is not the same I receive from English speakers when I read “No Entry,” its translation. I
definitely make language adjustments depending on what language is my primary vehicle of expression in the very
poem.
DO: You started writing as a poet and then moved to fiction later. Would you say that your concerns in
fiction are similar to those in poetry?
TO: On a broad level, I will say yes because in my fiction so far, I have concerned myself with issues of
disadvantaged groups such as women and the Niger Delta people, justice, fairness, corrupt politics. These are some of
the subjects of my poetry. That said, there are differences between what I write in poetry and what I write in fiction.
Poetry lends itself to more emotional, passionate, personal, mystical, and individualized expression that fiction does
not. What I can say from my experience is that there are some experiences and subjects that are better communicated
in poetry and others are better expressed in fiction.
DO: What prompted you to write Sovereign Body?
TO: The life experience of seeing Nigerian women marginalized, mistreated, and not allowed to exercise their innate
talents in the highly patriarchal society. My living in Maiduguri put this in the forefront of my consciousness. I had a
great student—her first name is Vero. She was a great talent but was forced to marry and two years into the marriage
she came to see me in the office and started crying—she was a wreck and not the buoyant, highly talented lady she
was. She had been wasted. In Maiduguri the petrol attendants are fond of telling women with PhDs that “I have four
of you at home!” What a cheek and insult! There are many women whose talents have been blown away or not
allowed to bloom. When you see these things on a daily basis, you are bound to write the sort of book as Sovereign
Body. It’s my tribute to women and their resilience in the patriarchal society.
DO: Tell me a bit about Great Boys and other works you are currently working on.
TO: Great Boys: An African Childhood was published about ten years ago. It is about my upbringing by my
Grandmother in the Niger Delta. It is a tale of growing up in a communal rural society; going to fish, farm, and of
course schooling in the years immediately preceding and following Nigeria’s political independence. I see it as my
story as well as the story of the times I went through from just before I was born till I was seventeen—from the solar
eclipse of 1947 through the political upheavals in Nigeria to the military coup of 1966 that delayed my going to Federal
Government College, Sokoto. But also in Great Boys, I record a passing world for my children and others to know
what used to be in their lush landscape that has become scarred by oil companies and others.
I have some unpublished poems and fiction. I have a trilogy of The Beauty I Have Seen, Doors of the Forest, and
Flow. It is done and I am looking for a publisher. I have a collection of short stories, The Debt Collector and Other
Stories in the press as I am working on new stories I have tentatively called The Old Man in a State House and Other
Stories. I am also writing poems that explore the eco system and other environmental aspects of the Niger Delta in
Songs of the Militant. I also have finished Matters of the Moment, which has to do with a couple divorcing after a
bitter divorce and custody fight and setting out to redeem themselves in their respective ways. In the end, they bring
down a military government.
DO: How does your artistic commitment extend into your political commitment?
TO: I see myself as a committed artist and that commitment manifests itself in many ways including politics. If I have
to remain relevant to my people, I have to deal with issues such as political corruption that have led to the
retrogression in the standard of living of people. If I have to be relevant, I have to deal with issues of minority rights
that make the Federal Government in Abuja to take all the oil monies and care less about environmental degradation
and the destruction of the occupations of fishing and farming of the people by oil blowouts and gas flares. My
concerns with justice, fairness, accommodation of those whose views may not tally with ours are ways of bringing
good governance to Nigeria. Each society tends to reflect others in many ways and my concerns for Nigeria are
similar for all my African peoples and in fact all human beings.
DO: Do you believe poetry should carry a social or political message?
TO: I strongly agree that poetry should carry a social or political message. If I write about my experience and that of
my people, society and politics are central to that concern and moving them to the side of justice, fairness, love
becomes an imperative. But poets are free to choose what message they should communicate. Others may have more
pressing messages than social or political messages on their minds.
DO: In all the poetry collections you have written, do you try to bring out one message, one theme, or do you
give each book a different theme?
TO: At the beginning of my writing career, I did not attempt to focus on one theme as I do now. However, what I
have observed is that what brings me inspiration over a length of time—six months to one year—tends to be
connected. So each collection seems to have its unifying themes. But, as I have said, it is the later poems that I tend to
focus on one major theme that has many sub-themes. I can think of I Want to Dance and In the House of Words as
more focused thematically and formally. In the former book, there is the quest/journey motif with images of nature
such as bird and moon—from a mystical journey to travels. In the latter work, it is the homebody who returns and
experiences the society he has left for many years and his efforts to re-integrate himself into his culture and society as
a positive agent.
DO: Which African writers do you most admire?
TO: I admire many African writers, not just one. As I said earlier, at one time or the other, I would say Christopher
Okigbo. But I like Wole Soyinka, especially in Death and the King’s Horseman and Ake: Years of Childhood.
DO: What about European, American or Asian authors?
TO: I like many writers from other places. I like Pasternak, Odysseus Elytis, George Seferis, Yannis Ritsos, Pablo
Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, and Derek Walcott.
DO: Of all the writers, African as well as Western/Asian, which do you feel have had the greatest impacts on
your formation as a writer?
TO: At the beginning, I will say W.B. Yeats and Wole Soyinka. But earnestly, it is the traditional songs of my people,
the udje dance songs, that I believe have made the greatest impact on me as a writer. It may sound strange but it is the
non-literate culture that has influenced my literary creations.
DO: Any advice for aspiring writers?
TO: Read wide. Read older writers. And know that writing takes time to develop. Be patient about your work and don’
t hurry to self-publish. Be familiar with your inherited poetic tradition and decide whether to embrace it or not—it is
after you know it that you can expand it, subvert it, or do whatever you like to it.
DO: Thanks for your time!
TO: My pleasure!
| Tanure Ojaide & Dike Okoro: A Literary Discussion |
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| OJAIDE |
| OKORO |