Writing poetry for me is an organic process which is triggered by the act of living closely. By close living, I refer to the act of subjecting life’s detail to scrutiny, sifting through experiences and bookmarking what is deemed remarkable.
As an artist, I set to achieve this the similar manner a painter grabs his oil paint when the desire to create comes, only that my desire to create is triggered by reflex and to a large extent am only a medium through which the poem flows. And so it’s an out of body experience as well as internal combustion of energy that heralds what I write; am as much in my poems as am out of it. This allows for the spontaneity which I find to be chief in act of poetry.
And pretty much the reflex comes at its own timing; I have no control over when the words fall upon me like a burden. For instance, I was in a lecture room when the first few lines of Clinical Blues V dropped into my mind. As it came, I knew that was yet another beginning of a poem.
Of course, after the draft comes out, I contribute editorial maneuvers which are largely removal of words, checking for consistency in ideas and rarely, addition of new words; alas, sometimes the process is just the act of taking out words and replacing back those same words. Nevertheless, what I seek to achieve is precise words that evoke distinct emotions while retaining their beauty. Poetry is that triad for me—precision, message and beauty.
And with Precision comes brevity, I think. The need to sift out words that attenuate the impact of the poet’s imagination is imperative and perhaps informs my editorial process. Each poem carries a message and the uniqueness or better yet, the ingenuity of a poem is the complexity of message. A poem must function from every bearing; there must also be intersections that allow for purposeful drifting, the intercourse between ideas. And lastly whatever is spewed on paper must be aesthetic, not necessarily musical, as I subscribe fully to Ezra Pound’s Logopoeic Vision—the dance of intellect among words and ideas vis-a-vis the emphasis on musicality and rhythm.
What I seek to achieve with my poetry is simple: I try to create the mundane with artistic flair, precision and fervor. I seek to beautify experiences. I seek to recreate reality, not in a singsong manner, but close enough to evoke poignant emotions.
And my influences are numerous. I sift my taste for poetry regularly and I search for poets who have honed their skill of arranging words which proffers different perspectives and ideas to different individuals and even the same individual at different times. Poets like Lenrie Peters affect me, perhaps because he is a surgeon and I can relate closely to the medical ambience his works exude. I admire the way his poems are not cluttered with needless words; what he achieves is neither mechanic nor sparse, he achieves wonderful poetry. Wole Soyinka, Kwesi Brew, David Diop, J.P Clark are amongst poets whose poetry I enjoy. And among western writers, I am fascinated by particular poems rather than authors. Ezra Pound, T.S Elliot, Langston Hughes, an endless list is in sight if I am obliged to continue.
This brings me to the point of literary devices and figurative expression. First and foremost I seek spontaneity in my poetry and whatever is outside that scope of thought I find to be contrived. The desire to force ideals and expression into a poem I find to be complicit and what is achieved is at best poor mimicry. Contemporary poetry in my opinion as not found sound literary analysis. A time will come when its figurative language would be decoded and documented, but not today. Namedropping however I find to be effective in the sense of precision and consequently brevity. The poet can’t afford to mince words and hence by dropping names he achieves what he would perhaps have to write a thesis over in a phrase or less. This, I find to be effective especially so when attention span is much reduced and everything is fast-paced like a box-office thriller.
