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Text of the page (random words):
water and i suffered till i decided to end it it was at that moment that poetry met me again i was searching for rope when i saw an old poetry book my teacher gave me as a gift the first poem inside was jp clark s streamside exchange it touched somewhere deep inside me somewhere filled with fire and it gave that place a new way to look at life at that point i knew there was no turning back poetry became a means of finding the way forward of naming the chaos and fear inside me of celebrating every joy i meet on this way to light so in a way i met and fell in love with poetry and it fell in love with me too so i can t really say it was by choice i believe life is full of gifts things given to us by the universe to navigate this space geosi gyasi your poem how to survive the fire basically deals with survival in a city like lagos where the only freedom for a man who loves another man is to leave do you ever experience some of these hardships you talk about in your poems romeo oriogun there are memories that are ours and there are some that are shared with us and even that becomes ours i wrote how to survive the fire for a friend who ran through the desert to italy last year he came out to some friends during a drunk night and he had to run before they lynched him nigeria is full of history of queer men lynched when found or burnt there are a lot of obstacles for queer men in nigeria and sometimes we learn to be quiet about it to try to blend in and go on pretending in other to live which is a sad thing because every day when you live a life that s not truly yours you die a little because i write about these things i ve been subject to online threat and abuse after my chapbook was published someone promised to look for me and burn my ass i still don t know what would make one hate his fellow human up to that extent i m dealing with some threats at the moment someone asked me to pay some money to him so he won t tell the paramilitary force i work for that i write queer poems his name on facebook is fictitious there s no way i can trace him i told some of my friends about it last week and they told me to be careful they are scared and i understand to be queer or support queer people is to walk with the fear of lynching or burning and there s also the police sometimes this is the price i pay for writing but it is better than keeping quiet i know queer people may not be free to love openly in my lifetime but it is a journey and we are laying the stones for the future and these memories must be documented for future generations to learn how people where lynched and killed because they dared to love nigeria is full of history of queer men lynched when found or burnt there are a lot of obstacles for queer men in nigeria and sometimes we learn to be quiet about it to try to blend in and go on pretending in other to live which is a sad thing because every day when you live a life that s not truly yours you die a little geosi gyasi what at all is queer poetry if i may ask romeo oriogun allen ginsberg once told a class to the world i m nothing but a cocksucker once you talk about queer poetry people think it is lgbtq people writing about gay sex but it is about members of a community that has been marginalize searching for a way to understand their body and the world through their eyes and if it comes out with themes of homosexuality then it is because it is the reality and queer poets don t write about homosexual themes all the time it is funny because some people think queer poetry is all about homosexual sex we also write about heterosexual sex we are humans and there are queer people is heterosexual relationships so we write about anything that pulls our humanity it maybe joy rainfall a walk under the evening sky police brutality hunger or anything else there is langston hughes ocean vuong jericho brown ricky laurentiis and a lot of other voices and their works tackles other themes so it will be unfair and wrong to cage queer poetry within a sexual circle geosi gyasi would you therefore continue to write queer poems amidst the threats you receive romeo oriogun i will it s what i know how to do it s what keeps me sane if i stop writing my world will drown in seas that beckons to me every hour geosi gyasi tell me something about udi the town in which you live and write romeo oriogun udi is a small town in enugu it is located in eastern nigeria it s a town of hills and solitude and people trying to smile against all odds i live in a paramilitary barrack so we are secluded from the people of the town it makes it interesting going to town to explore life there is palm wine and bush meat and okpa a local delicacy made from bambara nuts i think there s also music because there is a healthy mixture of old and young people it is not strange to hear high life music and nigerian hip hop from old houses there are hills and farms and trees i love walking and getting lost in bushes to the songs of birds sometimes i talk to people about the civil war and life and anything that hits my head the truth is that i m fascinated about spaces people inhabit about how those spaces shape them into who they are it makes me restless and the solitude and people of this place makes it possible for me to write and live and smile geosi gyasi are there any familiar faces to you from this year s brunel international african poetry prize romeo oriogun there s rasak i met him on facebook and i ve read a lot of his poems i ve also read kechi nomu s poem on expound she s a fantastic poet leila chatti is another poet i ve read and enjoyed i find the way she explore her identity to be brilliant saddiq is a brother i met him at a program in jos he is a fine poet and a beautiful soul i think nigeria is blessed with a lot of young voices at the moment and it is a beautiful thing to be among them a friend and i are also working on founding a queer journal in nigeria which will be a safe space for queer writers in africa to find a literary community geosi gyasi have you been working on any specific literary project romeo oriogun i ve been working on my manuscript a friend and i are also working on founding a queer journal in nigeria which will be a safe space for queer writers in africa to find a literary community at the moment i m trying to look at the legal implications and how queer writers can be protected especially those who don t want to write with a pseudonym geosi gyasi is are there anything that fascinates you about your own writing romeo oriogun each poem i write is a door into another i don t dwell much on my writing but i m moved when someone says because of my poems he knows he s not alone and his feelings are valid it makes me feel that what i m doing is living a life of its own and it s traveling with light into dark places geosi gyasi in a tough list of nine other shortlisted poets are your really confident of winning romeo oriogun it feels really strange to be on that shortlist i started writing three years ago so to be here is very strange for me i m not used to being in the spotlight this prize brings some of the best african minds writing poetry together and to be on it is an experience i m still trying to come to terms with i m not really thinking about winning i m just enjoying the moment geosi gyasi who is the single most important writer you most admire and why romeo oriogun this is really a though one there are a lot of writers i admire and i m tempted to cheat but let me be obedient for once i love and admire essex hemphill his poetry gave me a friend during dark days and the fact that he opened the way for a lot of voices to find home is also admirable there are days when i read his poems and cry because he died too young and i just feel we lost a lot of poems from him he was approaching his peak when he died any time i read him i m comforted because i know that my voice is valid and it is home just like my body geosi gyasi assuming you win this year s brunel international african poetry prize what would you use the prize money for romeo oriogun travel i m dying to visit south africa and nairobi and namibia end share this share share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x print opens in new window print like loading leave a comment uncategorized permalink posted by geosi interview with 2017 brunel international african poetry prize shortlisted poet richard oduor oduku april 22 2017 brief biography richard oduor oduku is a post cynical humanist a researcher and a poet and writer he studied biomedical science and technology and works as a research consultant in nairobi kenya he has been published in jalada africa saraba magazine kwani storymoja this is africa among others his story engagement published in the jaladaafrofutures anthology was longlisted for the bsfa awards 2015 he is also a nonfiction editor at panorama the journal for intelligent travel he is a founding member of jalada africa and is also a co curator and festival coordinator for the jalada mobile literary and art festival running in five countries in east africa geosi gyasi i am curious could you define who a post cynical humanist is richard oduor oduku the answer to that question is very long but it is just a statement of belief or unbelief depending on where you are starting it captures a lifetime of thinking and growing towards humanism i grew up in rural alego in siaya county kenya as a young boy i was either in school herding cows playing raucous games as most rural kids do or reading some books which should have been as i came to understand much later should have been a little way beyond the comprehension of a child my father had some books and so were my older brothers and sisters i became a student of words i ate up all the books and this is where the story begun it helped that rural living is a spiritual activity people are closer to the earth toiling daily for ugali makes people humble relevant to each other and able to persevere together rural life also creates an intimacy with the elements water wind fire earth and even though christianity was superficially practiced people were still closer to the spirit world and remained adamant to transfer all power to jesus christ my parents were deeply christian still are the bible was one of the first books i read from cover to cover the bible has good stories i fell in love with the poetic books job psalms proverbs ecclesiastes lamentations everyone loves the songs of solomon it is from these books that i first came into contact with the ancient jewish idea of fighting with god of screaming out against god of questioning god they contained acts of man seemingly battling the unimaginable or praising a mystical big unseen father in the sky they interested me so much as a child and probably laid my own foundation of questioning the idea of god and the nature of truth in the bible itself i also recognized from an early age what henry david thoreau once said that no way of thinking or doing however ancient can be trusted without proof what everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow mere smoke of opinion which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields my questioning led to a rejection of certain tenets of organized religion as preeminent my questioning after so many years landed me to humanism also i have always been a little cynical but in recent times i have adopted a manifestly positive view of life i borrowed the phrase post cynical humanist from poet yehuda amichai to capture these transitions in my belief system geosi gyasi how much of your work as a researcher affects your poetry richard oduor oduku i don t think i know how much at the end of the day i m just one person one individual who is doing many things i think all my experiences exist on a single spectrum research and poetry are just different points on this spectrum and there are many other points they feed from each other everything affects everything everywhere sometimes i can pick out the specific influence on poetry most times i can t geosi gyasi as a founding member of jalada africa could you tell me what jalada is all about richard oduor oduku in 2013 a group of writers from different african countries met at the british council nairobi in a creative writing workshop organized by granta in collaboration with kwani trust after a week of learning under ellah allfrey nadifa muhamed and adam foulds they decided to come together to edit each other s work and generally help each other grow this association of writers drawn from kenya uganda nigeria zimbabwe and south africa became jalada africa a pan african collective today the collective seeks to break boundaries by publishing works that expand the range of reading experiences and stretch our own reach as creative writers jalada has published five major anthologies and a mini anthology in the space of three years our fear issue a collaboration with transition magazine from harvard university will be published in july this year geosi gyasi looking at the other shortlisted poets are you convinced that you re the best to win richard oduor oduku i m awed by the incredible talents on that shortlist but i can only beat my own drum if i was crafty enough i would ve sent a jini to visit the judges and nudge them non violently of course to appreciate my poems a little more than the other shortlistees geosi gyasi what is the main concept behind the jalada mobile literary and art festival richard oduor oduku remember how griots in ancient africa moved from market to market telling stories singing reciting poems they were living archives diffusing cultures across lands the festival borrowed a lot from this ancient concept the mobile festival is a hybrid between a place based traditional festival model and a literary bus tour and sought to celebrate cultural diversity and nurture living connections between peoples cultures and geographies across east africa during the month long festival we partnered with local institutions in each of the 12 towns across 5 countries in east africa to bring a diverse program of events featuring panel discussions on various issues including the place of languages in writing creative masterclasses and poetry workshops as well as art installations geosi gyasi who what convinced you to submit your poems to this year s brunel international african poetry prize richard oduor oduku i have always wanted to submit i d feel puffed up and super confident about my poems but this usually died just a few hours to the deadline i d simply skip it and soliloquize on the unimportance of literary prizes this year wasn t an exception except i somewhat convinced myself that the poems were ready that they had developed strong wings and could be allowed to fly unaided i m bemused the judges found them worthwhile geosi gyasi looking at the other shortlisted poets are you convinced that you...