Precisely on December 16, 2022, Professor Emeritus Niyi Osundare was awarded the Boao International Poetry Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry in China. The diadem, one of the two which rank the highest in the hierarchy of the Boao International Poetry honour list, is normally awarded to a prominent poet from any part of the world, while the other is reserved for another poet found to have distinguished himself within China. Osundare co-won the coveted Chinese literary prize with Xu Jingya, the first poet from the African continent to be so honoured. Although he could not attend the award ceremony, at the 2022 Boao International Poetry Festival in Shanghai, he, however, greets the recognition with mixed feelings. On one hand, he sees Nigerian artists’ feats on the global stage as a testament to the abundant but unappreciated talents in the country, on the other, he is even more saddened that the country itself lags behind if it is not entirely missing in the international collaborative efforts at fostering cultural and artistic development and promotion. He speaks on this and more in this interview with Yinka Fabowale. Excerpts:
Congratulations on your new award. How did you get to know about it?
Well, surprised and delighted that my work is being read in China and one is getting some kind of recognition from there. The news of the award came to me through Cao Shui, a tremendously energetic and innovative poet whose work I read for the first time almost two years ago.
It was he who told me of the Boao International Poetry Festival in Shanghai, and said that if I had the time, it would be good for me to come to attend the festival. Then later, it was through him, I got the news that I had been selected as co-winner of the 2022 International Poetry Outstanding Achievement Award. This award usually goes jointly to two prominent poets: one from China, and the other from the other parts of the world. The two winners in 2022 are Xu Jingya, described as a famous Chinese poet and yours sincerely from Nigeria. I learnt that I was the first African poet to receive this award. The two of us were recognised in Shanghai on December 16, 2022, on the first night of the festival and its grand opening. Because of the COVID situation, I couldn’t register my physical presence at the festival, but my acceptance speech, entitled “Why Poetry Matters”, was translated by Cao Shui and presented on my behalf by him.
That apparently implies that you are read in China?
Well, I would not consider my writing as popular in China yet, but now, through his translation effort, Cao Shui is introducing my poetry and other works to Chinese readers. But I am an ardent reader of Chinese poetry and Chinese literature generally and an admirer of Chinese painting. I also teach Chinese poetics in the theoretical/conceptual part of my creative writing workshops. One of the most interesting things about the history of Chinese poetry is the close link between it and Chinese dynastic movements and transitions. Different dynasties seemed to have their own impact on poetic forms and techniques, and poetry and the poet were accorded due respect and provided the means of sustenance and survival. Poetry was so central to Chinese culture that it also affected politics positively. So, monarchical politics and the institution of poetry had an interesting coexistence.
I believe Nigeria, having so many poets of international status like Wole Soyinka, your good self, the late Christopher Okigbo, is in the position to host a major global literary event. So, who sets the ball rolling and what would it require to fund it?
“Seek ye the political kingdom,” said Nkrumah, that remarkable Ghanaian statesman and Pan-Africanist, and all other things shall be added unto thee. First, the political space will have to be friendly. Right here where this interview is taking place, for the past 24 hours we have not had electricity! In many, many other places, they haven’t had it for weeks! This is one country where the national power grid can break down as frequently as it pleases, though we are in no war situation, and we have no major disaster. With the scarcity of fuel, the use of the almighty saviour, the power generator, has become unreliable. Will you want to bring world poets here to stumble in our darkness and roast in the heat? What about security? Who can bring any of those poets to Nigeria today in the name of holding an international festival, with the dreadful possibility of their being waylaid and abducted for crippling ransoms by bandits and kidnappers who now constitute an alternative government in Nigeria? What about the galloping inflation we have all over the place and the suffering of our people? What about the deaths on our roads? Our stifling, garbage-choked roads and streets? As I have said many times, in Nigeria, government is absent in the most important areas of the people’s lives. You know, everywhere you go, our government keeps disappointing us. This was the same problem we had when the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) was inaugurated in Accra in 1989. You would have thought that the headquarters of such an important organisation should ‘naturally’ come to Nigeria, given the predominance of Nigerian writers on the continental level. But it never happened. The Ghanaian government had already laid out a beautiful, functional structure in a well-appointed part of Accra that suited PAWA’s purpose efficiently. In that period of Nigeria’s history, we were ruled by military dictators who put writers in detention, and whose members would later hang Ken Saro-Wiwa, a former president of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Yes, the relationship between the Nigerian pen and the Nigerian sword was that cordial! When you really look at the matter, you discover that the glories of writers, artists, and other creative people in Nigeria have been achieved in spite of beneficence from the Nigerian government, not because of it.
This is an unfortunate situation, really, because literary festivals have their own way of boosting the prestige and recognition of their host countries, in addition to making it possible for local writers to mix with writers from other parts of the world, trade creative ideas and techniques with them, and establish friendships and associations that often last a lifetime.
It’s such pity the problems you have cited would deny the country the opportunity of hosting the world fiesta. It has so much to showcase, culturally.
You are right. There is a lot to showcase about Nigeria. Ours is an abundantly endowed country whose leaders do not know what to do with the endowments. No genuine citizen can be proud of the state of the country today. Too many failures. Too many missed opportunities. This is not the Nigeria of our dream. Everything about this country has gone down, down, down!!! No electricity, no food, no personal safety. If you have a headache and you are a politician in need of treatment, off you jet to London or Paris or New York, or, these days, to India. If you have anything to say to us Nigerians today, you go to Chatham House in London as the newborn obedient servant of the Empire that you are. I never knew Nigeria would sink this low. At the moment, this is not the country one would want to invite anyone to for a festival. But I hope that that country will overcome the present problems and we will be able to welcome the world in the future.
Let’s return to China, Prof. Just before we veered into discussing the International Poetry Movement, I got this impression that I was probably not before the Chief Priest of Olosunta, but sitting right in a pagoda with a Chinese priest, will it be right to describe you as a ‘Chinese’ now?
Ha, ha! Now, you have gone irredeemably poetic. Well, call me Chinese, call me French, call me Jew, call me Arab, call me Urhobo, call me Hausa/Fulani, call me Igbo, and call me Yoruba. Just know that Humanity is one, I spell my own humanity with an uppercase ‘H’. It is very important. I read Chinese poetry and it speaks to me. In fact, in my acceptance speech, I had to mention some of the old Chinese poets whose works I have read and enjoyed.
“Why Poetry Matters,” you entitled your acceptance speech. Could you unpack this thesis for us?
Yes, it is a short speech designed for a six-minute delivery. What I am saying there is basically that poetry matters because it is the music of our being, the music of our soul, the music of our mind, the music of our ideas, the music of our future. Poetry matters because it sees unity where others see severance. Poetry matters because it provides us a weapon for our fight against injustice.
It teaches us the best ways of reaching out – rejoicing with those who rejoice; sorrowing with the sorrowful even as our songs pave the way to the possibility of hopeful joy; deepening our insight while expanding our horizon; disciplining our impulse while emboldening our resistance to evil; holding our hands every minute and leading us to the House of Truth, and Beauty, its soulmate. Poetry matters because it restores and sustains in us all that is Human – and humane. “Dare to be different, positively different!”, genuine poetry commands. Think hard, think deep. Wear courage like a shield…. Let me conclude this interview by poaching the last paragraph of the ‘famous’ acceptance speech:
Poetry matters because it never fails to remind us of the common colour of the blood in our veins, the violence of hunger, the ugliness of evil, the frailty of our forests, the vulnerability of our rivers, and the sigh of our planet. Poetry never forgets, and never ceases to remind the future of its debt to the past. Wherever justice is hidden, you can trust poetry to seek and find it. For in its lyrical habitation lives our lamp of life.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
