I feel like a woman taking her maiden dance for the first – Iquo Eke

This interview with the writer and performance poet, Iquo Eke, took place a few weeks before her first collection of poetry was released. She has since gone on to take part in the Ebedi International Writers’ Residency and appeared at the Goethe-Institut Nigeria organised Author’s Talk gathering, where she read a novel in progress and performed her poetry.

Why poetry first?

I’m well known for poetry so I felt it was the best for it to come out first, besides, the poems have been ready for a long time.

How did you get into writing in the first place?

As a teenager I used to scribble things that came to my mind. So that is how it started. I really didn’t know it was poetry until the late Ambassador Segun Olusola read one of my works. He had asked me something and said give me an answer tomorrow. I did and he said, ‘so you write poetry?’ and I thought, ‘oh, is that poetry?’ I didn’t know it could be called poetry. He told me then that anytime I write something for him I should put a date and add my name. That was how I began to take my poetry seriously.

What year was that?

About 1996.

How far back do some of the poems in this collection, Symphony of Becoming go?

As far back as 1999.

1999, were you a teenager then?

Laughter. Yes, I was a teenager then. I think there are one or two poems from 1999 which I felt still resonated with who I am as a write today.

Does that mean you threw out some poems from that era?

I decided that they were not serious enough to go to press with. I went through all my works and then looked at each for what it meant to me at the point that I wrote it. I appreciate the reality that each represented. Some of them represent a certain reality but maybe not in totality anymore. But I had to ask myself, what is that true representative of who I am right now as a person and how much I have evolved as a writer.

Did you also write prose as a teenager and are there stories from there that you are going to publish soon?

I am working on a collection of short stories but I doubt that I will add any stories that I wrote back then.

Why not?

Because I have come a long way from between then and now, I have evolved so much as a writer as compared to back then.

Is there a novel coming?

I have started on one but I don’t know whether I can finish it anytime soon. That is in the works.

Writers they say have to be disciplined to write and you are not just a writer so how do you manage to focus and come up with a book?

If I were ‘focused and disciplined’, the book would probably have come out five years ago. But I still think one needs focus and discipline in writing. It is not easy though because the average writer in Lagos cannot be said to be living on writing alone, you have to be doing something else. If it is not some 9-5 it might be some craft but it just means that when you decide to write you have got to be disciplined and take yourself away from everything else and face the writing. This is what I have tried to do in the last one year.

Do you write drama as well?

Yes, I write scripts especially for radio.

Have any of those scripts been performed?

Oh yes. I write constantly for the African Radio Drama Association, ARDA and they have radio drama from different parts of the country that have been performed. I also write and translate.

To what language?

Pidgin.

There was this pidgin blog you were involved with, how did that go?

I used to edit zazugist.com but it is no longer an online magazine.

Do you have enough poems for another collection?

I find myself constantly writing and I find that right now I am beginning to write short poems, which is not something I did often in the past. It is possible that another collection will come up, maybe not just yet. But I am still writing.

Are you going to enter the collection in a competition or have you done that already?

I entered it for the NLNG Prize for Literature.

What will you do with the $100,000 prize money should you win it?

$100,000. I kind of like the way that roles around my tongue but why plan for what I haven’t gotten yet? Even if I do not make the shortlist, I do not think that it will colour the way I feel about my work, my perception of my poetry. It is good that this came out just in time to enter the prize.

How do you feel about this book coming out now?

I feel happy, I feel like a woman who is taking her maiden dance for the first time after having watched many maiden dances take place. I feel this book ought to have been out long before now. But I don’t think it is late it just feels like it is about time even though it should have been here before now and I am happy about it. Somebody asked me, why Symphony of Becoming? Many of the poems there are lyrical.

You started writing before you started performing, why did you begin to perform?

I didn’t ever plan that I was going to perform, it is just that back then Beautiful Nubia (Segun Akiolu) had this thing, Word and Sounds that used to take place at Jazzville in Yaba (in Lagos). I went there the first time after somebody invited me. I had poems with me that I was going to read from the sheets of paper and I saw people get on the stage and deliver (without reading from sheets) and I felt that was great. I love the stage and it is something that I appreciate about myself. The second time I went there I wasn’t reading from the sheets of paper anymore. After the first time, Beautiful Nubia told me that was good, the next thing for you to do now is to memorise the poems. The second time I performed there I memorised and got into the spirit of the poem and it was nonstop.

Have you performed poems by other people?

Once in a while I have had people who were doing the public presentations of their works ask me to perform their poems. Yes I have.

Iquo Eke at the presentation of her book at Freedom Park, Lagos                                                                                               Photo: Terh Agbedeh

Because it is a symphony, I’d like to know if you also compose poems as music or you just adapt for performance as you go along?

I don’t compose them as music pieces but the way the words string together in my head it feels like music already before it comes out. Then I love music and if we had more than 24 hours in a day I’d probably also be a musician.

In other words, you don’t have a music background nor do you play a musical instrument?

Yes.

But you sang in a choir before?

Yes.

Are you still a member of a choir?

No, but I happen to love the folklore of my people and I find that folklore tells tales already so it helps if you understand the folklore and I use that in my poetry.

Do some of the poems come to you because you were told stories while growing up or you have to research to get the imagery and symbols from folklore?

I don’t know how the imagery comes, I really can’t say but yes I grew up listening to stories. But not often enough I must say. I did grow up listening to stories and a lot of those things have coloured my thinking, who I am. I don’t have to research to get the imagery, it just comes to me. It is probably listening to stories from my grandfather before he passed on and even my mother, a lot of the performances I do, I got right from my mother.

You must have listened to most of the folklore in your language so one expects that you would have written some of the poems in your language. Is one to expect a collection in your language in the future?

That is not a bad thought but I think that at this point in time I don’t think that I can do my language enough justice to write poetry in it. I speak the language well, I understand a lot of our proverbs but I don’t think I can do the language enough justice to write poetry in it.

Is it also because some people feel that if you write in a language other than English here you will have no audience; is that a factor in writing in English for you?

If I do decide to write in my language there is always the option of having it translated. But thinking of whether it will affect communication is not a problem for me. When I am ready, if I do get to that point, I’ll write in my language.