Uche nduka biography of william
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By Africa in Words Gueston •
AiW Guest: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike
Niran Okewole is the author of the widely-acclaimed Logarhythms. His poems have won the MUSON Festival Poetry Prizes in 2002 and 2003, and the Sawubona Music Jam/Berlin International Poetry Festival Prize in 2008. The Hate Artist is his latest poetry collection.
Uche Peter Umez: What is your earliest poetry memory? How do you go about writing a poem? Can you describe your own experience of writing this collection? And how come it took you nearly eleven years to put together a second collection, after your debut Logarhythms?
Niran Okewole: My earliest poetry memory is of reading Yoruba verse in Alawiye, a popular text that people in my generation read in primary school. I liked one of the poems so much I copied it out, and my dad, then lecturing at the University of Ife, stuck it on his office wall. By secondary school I was writing my own verse, much of which was influenced by Keats, Tennyson and other English poets. This juvenilia was mostly rhymed and was destined to be burned in a small cauldron. How do I go about writing poetry? It’s like carpentry now, really. You assemble material and try to fit it all together, saw here, hammer there, chisel there, all the
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First published, Step 16, 2011. Reproduced beg for archival big ideas only.
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For the inaugural episode of the Isele Writer Series, our editorial intern, Uchenna Emelife, had a virtual chat with the US-based Nigerian poet and pianist, Echezonachukwu Nduka. Their conversation was centered on Nduka’s poetry, African pianism, and much more.
You’ve spoken extensively about your music background as well as your literary background. Which were you exposed to first and at what point in your life did you decide you’d be doing both?
Both worlds were there from the beginning, but music influenced my imagination first as a listener, long before I became a curious reader. Whatever I wrote as a child, considered at the time as one of my playful activities, were attempts to recreate what I read and imagined. It wasn’t anything serious at all. Music was always there, diverse genres, some of which I heard against my will. But classical music enveloped my being. That was the genre that made me want to be a musician. I wanted to play the piano and the organ, and often imagined myself conducting an orchestra. I have written here about how G.F. Handel’s music converted me as a child. The sound was grand, nothing like what I had heard before. And so, I knew it was only a matter of time before I started mounting stages as a solo classical mus