THIS Sunday at the waterfront garden of the Goethe Institut on Victoria Island, Lagos at 2pm, Nigerians, especially the literary and culture community will have an opportunity to meet and interact with the nine short-listed writers for the Nigeria Prize for Literature. It is at the instance of the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA), which branded itself as Culture Landscapists, and has always been facilitating emergence of a vibrant environment for the flowering of the arts and cultural tradition of the country.
In setting up this Sunday programme, the CORA said it recognizes that the mere fact of being long-listed not to mention being short-listed is as good as winning in other climes, where literary, artistic achievements count for something.
Until now, both the short-listed and would-be winners were usually hidden from the public. Well, perhaps not hidden; but they hardly had opportunity to hug the limelight through a programmed event that would enable them enjoy deserved public exposure as celebrated laureates. And on occasion of the ceremony unveiling winner of the coveted prize, usually the winner, and perhaps the first and second runners-up get maximum exposure through media coverage.
Previous winners of the award, and all such similar prize-winners in other fields of creative endeavour hardly get a mention beyond the day of award. This rather obscures the significance of such award as winners do not get celebrated as the stars that they are. Very little is heard of Kaine Agary, the winner of the same award last year with her Yellow Yellow.
And, to think that the Nigeria Prize for Literature is worth a whooping sum of $50,000 makes the relative obscurity the writers sink into inexplicable, and sad. The world famous Man Booker Prize is worth the same amount as LNG prize but attracts world attention and acclaim. This makes the Man Booker the second acclaimed prize after the Nobel Prize.
The CORA said it intends to use the BOOK PARTY - as it has tagged Sunday event - to see how the competitors can be put in the public domain for proper appreciation before the main awards ceremony.
In same spirit of putting the short-listed poets in public court, The Guardian spoke with six of the nine writers to gauge their pulse on being nominated, what their feelings were and what inform their individual creative endeavours among other isues.
For Ahmed Maiwada, author of Fossils (published by Hyburn), he was surprised to receive the news of his being short-listed. He never thought that his eclectic style and the symbolism in his work Fossils would find favour with the judges. But it did, and he is on his way to winning the $50,000 prize. He, however, highlighted a typical Nigerian problem that usually coloured everything black or sour. He said, "Besides, I thought only the connected get rewarded in the Nigerian scheme of things. I am not connected. I don't seek favours. Besides, I come from a part of Nigeria not generally associated with excellence".
However, poetry is not the only kind of writing that Maiwada does. Fiction and essays also feature in his writing enterprise. He has other works waiting to gain public space, which might benefit greatly from this nomination. He stated, "Yes, I write fiction and essays. I write short stories and novels. My first published novel shall be released shortly, entitled Musdoki. I have several manuscripts awaiting publication. Most of them are historical novels; and I think historical novels take the highest regards in fiction writing, just as symbolic poems in the poetry genre."
Maiwada's passion for poetry is rather intellectual in nature. He confessed, "I don't read poems; I study them. And I love foreign poets for their polish and release".
For Maiwada, who started writing poetry in 1988 in the style of William Wordsworth for his Igbo girlfriend at the time, anybody just can't write poetry because it is an art form on its own. He emphasised, in reaction to a question whether poetry is innate in every human being: "It is just like asking: Is the ability to sing or dance or manufacture cars innate in every human being? No! Poetry is a tradition of high art. It requires more than being a human being, even more than being a human being with talent. While many people may have the promise to be poets, very few achieve that status because of the demand for originality and craft".
Odoh Diego Okenyodo thinks and feels differently though. For considering his From a Poem to its Creator (also on Hyburn stable) worthy for nomination, he feels a sense of vindication. This is not surprising for a Pharmacist whose foray into the uncertain waters of journalism and creative writing caused a few of his close friends and family some anxiety. Now perhaps, he says he can silence a few and possibly win the admiration of others with this nomination.
He is full of rhapsody, "Mine to be chosen among some body works... That feels like a vindication for me! You know, I have been committed to writing for a long time and I was even expelled from the university for doing it. I'm also not practising pharmacy, which I studied, just for the same reason.
"People ask you questions about the prestige in being a pharmacist and why you chose to abandon it for some rather uncertain future in literature and journalism - literary journalism, to be precise - and I always really labour to explain it; telling them that it gives one satisfaction, and blah-blah. Again, you spend so much of your earnings trying to ensure that your writings are visible and packaged, and friends and family just tolerate that. Until it is announced that that little thing you always bothered about is now worthy of being considered for a huge amount of money. That is the feeling; vindication!"
While Musa Idris Opanachi (The Eaters of the Living) feels grateful to Allah and is happy, G'Ebenyo Ogbowei (Songs of a Dying River) (Kraftbooks) simply says,
"'Thank you, Lord'; it's all His doing, and I give Him thanks". But Omo Uwaifo (currently holidaying in the UK), who with two others, shared the first NLNG Prize for Literature in 2004 with his second novel Fattening House, feels 'exhilarated and flattered' at being nominated again this year. So, he says, "I did not expect to be on the list. Whatever happens now, I must celebrate with a goat to be brought in from Benin City". And, he is giving open invitation to everyone to the promised feast.
Nevertheless, it is not all backslapping for these poets and writers who have been thrown up to be flag-bearers of Nigerian Literature. What makes their writings tick? What qualifies as a good poem? In other words, if they were to be the judges of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, what would they be looking for in each of the entries submitted?
Invariably, their responses are as interesting as their varied creative minds - the hallmark of creative imagination. Although Maiwada says he does not write for rewards, he is convinced a good poem should have the right poetic ingredients like trophes or figures of speech, which must be original.
He argues, "Those figures of speech must be fresh and original, new and original metaphors and sounds. It is a high poem that achieves a good balance of metaphors and anti-metaphors (or ironies); and that is very rare in Nigerian writing. And it is the highest poem that is elevated to the symbolic level.
"Poems loaded with proverbs have been celebrated in Nigeria for a long time; and I think that is the reason why we have remained stagnant in the comity of global poetry. Proverbs are worn-out imagery and unless a poet is able to de-familiarise them, to impose his personality on them, he has no business using them in his works for they are not his original creations. Using them amounts to cheating".
It is for these reasons that William Shakespeare (for his superhuman puns, metaphors and ironies), E. E. Cummings (for courage to take as much license with syntax as possible; and for his love to play with forms), Lord Byron (for the depth of his imagination and perfect control of diction), T. S. Eliot (for his innovative forms and deep imagination; for being mentioned in terms of modernist writings), and John Donne (for his revolutionary metaphysical works laced with lyrical brilliance) are his favourite non-African writers.
But Gabriel Okara (for his symbolism), J. P. Clark (for his lyricism), Uche Nduka (for his avant-gardism), Ahmed Maiwada (for his eclectism - apologies if I seem proud), and Mu'azu Maiwada (for his surrealism) are Maiwada's all time Nigerian favourite writers.
For Okpanachi, who is not new to winning prizes (won ANA/Cadbury prize in 2008) a good poem should have reality, simplicity and a good combination of expression and mystery of meaning as defining qualities. However, Okenyodo would rather a good poem give the reader a new experience, "either a new experience of words or a new experience of what life is or isn't.
"A good poem attempts to de-familiarise our experiences, and to set us thinking, and then reading it again. If you cannot want to read a piece of poetry again, it's likely to be failed poetry. It is not necessarily a complicated array of words; the way the poem addresses his subject should be such that you are led into a new hideout and shown what you never saw or knew. A good poem is some sort of tour guide".
Okpanachi writes short stories besides poetry and he has some ready for publication while some had been published in review magazines abroad. He says, "I'm currently writing a novel, From the Margins of Paradise. So, Matthew Arnold, Mahmud Darwish, Thomas Hardy, T.S. Elliot, and Gibran Khalil_are some foreign writers he loves to read; while Ilagha Nengi, Ogaga Ifewodo, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare and Wole Soyinka are his Nigerian favourites. Not everyone can write poetry because of poetry's peculiar nature. So, he says, poetry "is for the sensitive."
Also for Ogbowei, writing is an art that does not lend itself easily to all. He stressed, "An artist is a man with certain innate abilities. He's a man endowed with certain rare gifts, which he spends long hours honing. He's a man with a vision; one whose eyes and ears have been opened".
Also, training and taste buds are Ogbowei's defining characteristics of a good poem. So, a poem has to be "vivid, musical and appealing to the emotions and the rational faculty at the same time. But some other readers might have other parameters to judge a work of art. And that's what a poem is - a work of art. If so, it must be beautiful, elegant. But, you see, I'm primarily a poet and not a critic, so I won't want to talk about this".
Uwaifo believes a good poem must be "perceptive of its subject and uncluttered; it must be respectful of the reader and of the unbridled freedom of modern verse". For Uwaifo, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcot, William Wordsworth, Paul Muldoon and a selection of great exponents of poetry - ancient and modern are his non-African writers. But Odia Ofeimun and Niyi Osundare are the only serious Nigerian poets he knows and reads.
The chairman of Benin Moat Foundation and retired engineer with former NEPA, Uwaifo believes everybody has the ability to write poetry, "Yes; to the extent that languages are spoken and every language has its innate beauty - lyricism, allegories, similes et al".
Just like the others, Dr. Ademola Omobewaji Dasylva, Reader and Associate Professor at the_Department of English,_University of Ibadan (Songs of Odamolugbe by Kraftbooks) believes the ability to write poetry is not an innate quality but one that has to be developed and cultivated. "No, I do not think so," he stressed. "The ability to write poetry is not innate in every humankind. Rather, I would say everybody has poetry in, and around, him or her. But it takes a tamed consciousness or awareness to discern and respond to it as appropriate. Writing is a skill acquired by some training, but poetry is a gift; poetry writing is a combination of both skill and gift".
For being nominated, Ademola says, "I feel fulfilled and since I teach poetry in the university, I regard my being short-listed among the best nine in the current Nigerian Prize for Literature assessment for the award as a proof of my success in poetry teaching and writing. I feel fulfilled that, at least, I have succeeded in reaching out to people out there, who understand and appreciate my message and poetry.
"I feel fulfilled that all my life I have appreciated good poetry and celebrated great poets. Now, the Nigeria Prize for Literature has afforded me also a place to be celebrated like the great poets before me".
The teacher of poetry will likely be caught reading such foreign poets as William Blake, John Keats, William Shakespeare, John Donne and Claude McKay. But John P. Clark (-Bekederemo), Wole Soyinka, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun and Okinba Launko are his Nigerian favourite poets.
For him, a good poem "must communicate effectively by exploiting the resources of language and music; it must be well informed and, in turn, must be informing; it must be propelled by a conviction that is fundamental, a conviction that is fore-grounded by a definite ideology; its topicality must engage issues associated with its immediate society, and must be relevant globally".
Okenyodo, however, is one poet that does not read what the crowd is reading. He believes in the experimental element of poetry, and so forages into alien or obscure corners to find his enjoyment. For instance, his favourite Nigerian poets are not the usual ones on the reading list of most people, not the ones that succeed in catching the popular imagination because, for him, they poets or writers don't always catch the imagination or succeed.
"My favourite Nigerian poets are people you do not know so much about," he says. "I love Ismail Bala Garba's poetry; same with the Maiwadas - Dr. Mu'azu Maiwada, who is my literary mentor; and his brother Ahmed Maiwada, who is my contemporary in a sense. Those are two, or three, right?
"I read Obi Nwakanma and love his works. I love Elnathan John's rhyme schemes, which are usually effortless. And then there are works by the masters like Okara, Osundare, Okigbo, and so on. In truth, I am one that feels that poetry is such an experimental art that you can only select among a person's works and say, "This one succeeded", not that this author always writes good poetry. The fact that the poet wrote a good one today is no guarantee of his tomorrow."
Ogbowei's reading list and the reasons for it is an impressive one. His favourite foreign writers include T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and L S Senghor. "They all are poets concerned with capturing the spirit of their age," he argues. "Reading their poetry you find language that is vivid and lyrical; it's poetry that appeals to your emotion and compels you to make some critical assessments.
"With Yeats, Senghor and Langston Hughes, you come face to face with great art put to the service of a nation or an oppressed race. Senghor's beautiful poetry, which is propagandistic, entertains and educates. In spite of all Soyinka said, Senghor's poetry is at its best."
Christopher Okigbo is the first on his Nigerian reading list. Of him, he says, "If he'd lived long enough, I believe we'd have had a harvest. He's yet to be surpassed. As an Ijaw, I've learnt a lot from J P Clark-Bekederemo and Gabriel Okara. Then, of course, there's Tanure Ojaide, Ogaga Ifowodo, Remi Raji and Niyi Osundare.
"Some critics insist that after Osundare and Ojaide, nothing new has happened. They're mistaken, because a lot of writing is taking place today that these critics aren't aware of. Not everybody is beholden to Osundare and Ojaide".
For Carlton Lindsay Barrett (A Memory of Rivers), elder statesman, writer, journalist, essayist, playwright, poet and novelist, originally from the Caribbean, "memories of the historical event that was the slave trade that seems to surge through my very veins and the evidence that the human spirit is indomitable and can overcome all challenges" is great influence in his writings. And he says, "My decision to live and work in Africa was a conscious act of rebellion at first that has metamorphosed into a spiritual desire for renewal and peace for all African peoples through cultural understanding. This is the major force that continues to drive my professional and creative purpose in life and it is the basis on which I expect my legacy as a writer to be judged when I am gone.
"Ever since I first learnt to read as a very young child I have been fascinated by the mind's ability to create new worlds of vision and expectation out of the simple act of self-expression. I have always admired those who can manipulate this quality in life through the deployment of language whether in speech or on paper. This encouraged me to commence writing poetry in my late teens and to build a career out of both storytelling and reporting".
The other writers in the Nigeria Prize for Literature are Hyginus Ekwuazi (Love Apart) (Kraftbooks) and Nengi Josef Ilagha (January Gestures) (Treasure Books).
http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/friday_review/article01/indexn2_html?pdate=180909&ptitle=Nigeria%20Prize%20for%20Literature:%20Book%20party%20for%20nine%20poetry%20awardees
